On Beauty

New York: The Penguin Press, 2005 First edition, first printing. Signed by Zadie Smith on the title page. Publisher's red cloth boards, with author's initials stamped in gilt to front board, and spine stamped in gilt; original tan dust jacket with red foil titles, photo of author by Roderick Field to rear flap. Near fine book, with just a touch of soiling to cloth, head of spine a touch rubbed; good plus unclipped dust jacket, with spine and top edges of panels faded to white, spine foil faded to pink, a few tiny stains and marks, small nick to foot of spine. Overall, a sound copy. Zadie Smith's third novel, On Beauty, explores the rivalries and relationships among the members of two academic families - the liberal and interracial Belsey family and the conservative Trinidadian Kipps family. The book pays clear homage to E. M. Forster's classic novel on social conventions and class hierarchy, Howards End (1910). In Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of the book, she writes, "[Zadie Smith] has taken a novel about Edwardian England and used it as a launching pad for a thoroughly original tale about families and generational change, about race and multiculturalism in millennial America, about love and identity and the ways they are affected by the passage of time." . Signed by Author. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Dust Jacket Included.