Great product!</br></br>Product Description</br></br>Zadie Smiths dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding  on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis.  But the truth is that Zadie Smiths voice is remarkably fluently and altogether  wonderfully her own.<br><br> At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends  Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II Archie and Samad  and their families become agents of Englands irrevocable transformation. A second  marriage to Clara Bowden a beautiful albeit tooth-challenged Jamaican half his  age quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life and produces Irie a knowing  child whose personality doesnt quite match her name (Jamaican for no problem).  Samads late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born)  produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbals every effort to direct them  and a renewed if selective submission to his Islamic faith. Set against London s racial and cultural tapestry?? venturing across the former empire and into the past  as it barrels toward the future?? <b>White Teeth</b> revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of  modern life?? flirting with disaster?? confounding expectations?? and embracing the  comedy of daily existence.?Look for Zadie Smith??s new book <i>Swing Time</i>?? available now.</br></br>Amazon.com"/br></br>Epic in scale and intimate in approach?? <I>White Teeth</I> is a  formidably ambitious debut. First novelist Zadie Smith takes on race?? sex?? class?? history?? and the minefield of gender politics?? and such is her wit and inventiveness that these weighty subjects seem effortlessly light. She also has an impressive geographical range?? guiding the reader from Jamaica to Turkey to Bangladesh and back again.<p>  Still?? the book's home base is a scrubby North London borough?? where we encounter Smith's unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and intemperate Samad Iqbal?? who served together in the so-called Buggered Battalion during World War II. In the ensuing decades?? both have gone forth and multiplied: Archie marries beautiful?? bucktoothed Clara--who's on the run from her Jehovah's Witness mother--and fathers a daughter. Samad marries stroppy Alsana?? who gives birth to twin sons. Here is multiculturalism in its most elemental form: " first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus?? cramped boats and planes?? cold arrivals?? medical checks."  Big questions demand boldly drawn characters. Zadie Smith's aren't heroic?? just real: warm?? funny?? misguided?? and entirely familiar. Reading their conversations is like eavesdropping. Even a simple exchange between Alsana and Clara about their pregnancies has a comical ring of truth: "man has to have the private things--a husband needn't be involved in body business?? in a lady's... parts."And the men?? of course?? have their own involvement in bodily functions: <blockquote> The deal was this: on January 1?? 1980?? like a New Year dieter who gives up cheese on the condition that he can have chocolate?? Samad gave up masturbation so that he might drink. It was a deal?? a business proposition?? that he had made with God: Samad being