Zadie Smith was barely out of university when White Teeth arrived in 2000. The novel follows two wartime friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, and their families through decades of life in northwest London. It is sprawling, funny and introduced a voice that was unmistakably Zadie’s. She has since written five more novels and four essay collections, but the book that made her name feels as fresh and relevant as ever.
White Teeth is also Dua’s November Monthly Read. She sat down with Zadie in front of a live audience at the Southbank Centre at the end of October, as part of the London Literature Festival line-up curated by Dua and the Service95 Book Club. Here, Zadie shares 10 books that have recently moved, impressed or struck her, from a cowboy epic she spent years refusing to read to a debut she says never got the flowers it deserved.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Many men have told me to read this book over the years, including my own husband. I assumed because it was cowboy-related I would not like it. I was wrong. It is among the very greatest of American novels. McMurtry wrote it to demystify the West, to show it how it really was, in all its brutality. No more, no less. (Don’t let the fact that many readers use it as a basis to construct new myths put you off.) I have no idea how he wrote it. It hardly feels ‘written’. It just ‘is’. A masterpiece.
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
Really funny. And great about men in crisis.
Every Story Is A Love Story by Imbolo Mbue
Mbue writes these beautiful, humane and moving novels about the Cameroonian diaspora. This one is about a man who loses his wife and their unborn twins when she is knocked down by a car while out jogging. It tells the story of their love and the aftermath of the disaster, simultaneously.
Murmurs From The Hills: Rwandan Tales by Scholastique Mukasonga
Some people have stories in their bones. Mukasonga is like that. There’s an elemental aspect to her writing – it feels like it’s been handed down on tablets. If you haven’t read her before this is a good place to start.
How to End A Story by Helen Garner
I was very glad to see Anne Carson win the Nobel [Prize in Literature this October]. My cup would runneth over to see Helen Garner get it next year. All the novels and the nonfiction are tremendous. She is not capable of writing a bad book. But her diaries are the greatest since Virginia Woolf’s. I really mean that.
Bonding by Mariel Franklin
This brilliant, caustic, sexy and funny novel was published in England a few years ago. It never got the flowers it deserved. It’s about tech and sex and pharma. It’s about our modernity. It’s devastating and a hell of a debut.
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
This cheered me! A young New York writer with a sense of humour, a fancy style, an interest in plot, a gift for character and some desire for narrative momentum? Refreshing! This book was also Dua’s Monthly Read for August 2026 – watch her interview with Madeleine here.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
She’s always good, of course, but this one really got me. I started crying on page two.
The Coin by Yasmin Zaher
A very funny, dark novel by a Palestinian writer from a few years back. In my mind it’s a bit like the female counterpart to the aforementioned Black Bag.
The Recovery House by Derek Owusu
A small, delicate, existential book about a mental breakdown. Told from the inside rather than via medical definitions. Moving.
There’s More – Delve Deeper Into White Teeth With The Service95 Book Club...
WATCH Dua’s interview with author Zadie Smith
LISTEN to a playlist chosen by Zadie that captures the mood of the 1990s
