On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Howard Belsey is an Englishman abroad, an academic teaching in Wellington, a college town in New England. Married young, thirty years later he is struggling to revive his love for his African-American wife Kiki. Meanwhile, his three teenage children – Jerome, Zora and Levi – are each seeking the passions, ideals and commitments that will guide them through their own lives.

After Howard has a disastrous affair with a colleague, his sensitive elder son, Jerome, escapes to England for the holidays. In London he defies everything the Belseys represent when he goes to work for the Trinidadian right-wing academic and pundit Monty Kipps. Taken in by the Kipps family for the summer, Jerome falls for Monty’s beautiful, capricious daughter, Victoria.

But this short-lived romance has long-lasting consequences, drawing these very different families into each other’s lives. As Kiki develops a friendship with Mrs Kipps, and Howard and Monty do battle on different sides of the culture war, hot-headed Zora brings into the family’s midst a handsome young man from the Boston streets whom she is determined to draw into the fold of black middle-class life – but at what price?

Zadie Smith

was born in north-west London in 1975 and still lives in the area. She is the author of White Teeth and The Autograph Man both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. On Beauty was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2005.