LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE MARCH-SEPTEMBER ISSUE | Page 63

TEN TOP READS OF THE YEAR
George RR Martin and Yann Martel head the authors releasing new
material
Critics are looking forward to a bumper year for books in 2016, with
new releases from several esteemed authors on the cards. Here are ten
titles to look out for...
Swing Time, Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith's forthcoming novel, Swing Time, is about "two brown
girls", according to the author. It's the tale of two bi-racial dancers who
grow up together in a poor London neighbourhood but diverge in
adulthood in the 1990s. Where one follows her dream of turning
professional, the other becomes a personal assistant to a pop star.
"It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in
their early 20s, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either,"
says publisher Hamish Hamilton, which describes the novel as
"dazzlingly energetic and deeply human".
Performing a reading of two chapters of the book at the US's Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, Smith intriguingly said the idea of
conspiracy – which she sees as "a symbol of a yearning for knowledge"
in the absence of a formal educational structure – is an underlying theme
throughout the novel.
TBC
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