You are sitting there, staring at yourself on a screen, when suddenly, you’re no longer alone. Peering out from the digisphere is a true literary rockstar: the singular Zadie Smith, an author as polyphonic as her justly celebrated novels.

Taken as a collective, her essay collections, Changing My Mind (2009) , Feel Free (2018) , Intimations (2020), and Dead & Alive —this last one, out today from Penguin Press —have charted a very complicated quarter-century. They cover an unbelievable gamut of subjects, tones, and even forms, variously examining the Golden Age of Hollywood, what the Obama Era stood for, how to live in a pandemic, and all manner of angles related to literature and art, race, the sexes, celebrity culture, and more. Central to each book is a philosophy of engagemen

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