show teeth

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Showing teeth is the debut novel of the British writer Zadie Smith, born in 1975 . The novel was published in Great Britain in 2000 under the title White Teeth and was translated into German in the same year. The novel has won the Guardian First Book Award , the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award , among others . The Time Magazine picked up the book in its list of the 100 best English novels since 1923 on. In 2015, the BBC selected the best 20 novels from 2000 to 2014 as one of the most important works of this century to date.

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Show teeth tells the stories of three families from different origins who live in the London borough of Willesden . Through the different perspectives of the ethnically diverse characters, a range of social issues and historical events are negotiated. These perspectives are interrupted by the comments of an authoritative narrator, which are characterized by a humorously ironic to serious tone.

The plot of the novel begins on New Year's morning in 1975 with the portrayal of a failed suicide attempt by the Englishman Archibald Jones. After a failed marriage, a new life began for the simple-minded man in his forties, when he met Clara Bowden, who was years younger than him, at a New Year's Eve party and got married shortly afterwards. Clara is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants and by marrying Archie breaks out of the sphere of influence of her mother Hortense, a passionate Jehovah's Witness .

At the same time, Archibald's friend Samad Iqbal moves with his wife Alsana, who is also years younger, from Bangladesh to England. The unusual friendship between Archie and Samad brings the two couples together, who move into their new homes in north-west London. Archie and Samad share memories of the last days of the Second World War , which they experienced as young soldiers in the British Army far from what was actually happening in the war and did not even notice the end of the war. A flashback to 1945 describes how Archie and Samad, as the only survivors of their troops and without radio contact, bring a notorious French doctor belonging to the German National Socialists into their power. The two drive out of the village with their hostage to execute him. Samad and Archie are drunk, Samad has also taken morphine and so he persuades Archie to shoot the Nazi.

The main storyline in London in the 1970s is pushed forward when both families are expecting children at the same time. In 1975 Irie Jones and the twins Magid and Millat Iqbal were born and went to the comprehensive school in Willesden together in the following years. Even if the children are confronted with the frightening racism of an old war veteran during a school campaign for Thanksgiving , the benevolent portrayal of an ethnic diversity and hybridity that has become commonplace in the London borough prevails in the novel.

After a brief affair with his sons' music teacher, Poppy Burt-Jones, and a subsequent identity crisis, Samad and Archie come up with a plan. He is considering sending Magid and Millat to Bangladesh to educate them to protect them from the evils of declining values ​​in Western society. However, since there is only enough money for the flight for one son, Samad, after a long decision-making process, has Magid flown out to relatives in a night-and-fog operation without first letting Alsana know about the plans, which in turn only takes with the bare essentials Samad is talking.

While the ambitious, intelligent Magid sends eloquent letters from afar, the rebellious girl hero Millat worries the Iqbals. As a teenager, Millat joined a fundamentalist Muslim group and, to the horror of his parents, took part in the book burnings of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses in Bradford , Northern England .

Irie is secretly in love with the daring Millat, who only treats her as a good friend. Irie suffers from her ethnically hybrid identity during puberty, as she feels alien in the traditionally “white” dominated England. She undertakes various attempts to adapt herself externally, for example by straightening her hair, which, however, ends with complete hair loss.

In order to escape the domestic chaos, the two aging gentlemen Archie and Samad meet regularly in their local pub, O'Connell's Pool House. There the two war veterans exchange their memories of the war, which their younger wives and children are not interested in. In addition, Samad has the opportunity to talk to Archie about his favorite topic in this environment: Samad is allegedly the great-grandson of Sepoy Mangal Pandey , who triggered the Indian uprising in 1857 and is therefore a hero for Samad. By addressing this historical event, the differences in national historiography are discussed by Archie and Samad, as in the British version of the events Mangal Pandey went down in the British history books as a dazed fanatic who failed even to judge himself.

In the course of the storyline, in which Iries and Millat's school days are told, another family comes into play. When Irie and Millat are caught smoking hash in the schoolyard, Joshua Chalfen, who is actually uninvolved, is brought into the act. Since the headmaster notices that the ambitious high-flyer Joshua is trying to get involved in the "cool" clique of Irie and Millat through the action, he imposes what he sees as a didactically valuable punishment for the three young people: Irie and Millat should regularly go to the School with the intellectual academic family Chalfen doing their homework together with Joshua and studying for classwork.

The middle-class Chalfen family is portrayed in a very humorous way in the novel. Marcus Chalfen is a renowned Jewish scientist and genetic researcher . His wife Joyce is a passionate gardener and, thanks to the secure income from Marcus' research, has taken care of the upbringing of her four sons in addition to writing an alternative gardening manual.

To the displeasure of Joshua and Irie, Joyce is taken with the charismatic and stubborn Millat. She makes it her business to raise the boy, while Irie is fascinated by the intellectuality and openness of the family. For Irie, the white middle-class family appears to be the ideal type of a (only apparently) flawless English identity, of which she would like to become a part. Irie spends more and more of her free time with the Chalfens and helps Marcus with his bookkeeping in order to earn pocket money.

Irie feels left out when Marcus begins an intense pen pal with Magid. The Magid, who lives in distant Bangladesh, is increasingly becoming a student of Marcus, who in turn is impressed by Magid's intelligence and maturity. Marcus aims to bring the prodigal son back to England to work with. When Marcus actually pays for the flight for Magid and Magid arrives, Samad is appalled: The son he sent to Bangladesh to bring up a good education has since developed into the image of a traditional English gentleman who speaks a language like the British Queen , wearing white suits and eating pork. Due to Magid's behavior, Millat, who is now increasingly active in the fundamentalist group, refuses to meet his brother, so Magid finds accommodation with the Chalfens.

Clara and Alsana become increasingly jealous of Joyce because, according to their own feelings, she threatens to take their children away from them. Joshua also cut himself off from his family after finishing school and is active in an animal welfare association to rebel against his father's animal experiments . Irie moved out of her home due to an argument with her parents about the possibility of a year-long trip before starting her apprenticeship and lives with her grandmother Hortense. There she meets Ryan Topps, among others, who was a couple with her mother Clara before Archie. During her stay with Hortense, Irie works through her own Jamaican family history on her mother's side. A discussion between Magid and Millat arranged by the families and Irie ends in a dispute. In a chaos of emotions caused by pent-up despair and sexual abstinence, Irie sleeps at short intervals, first with Millat and then with Magid.

In the further course of the plot, the finale of the novel is prepared, in which all the main characters meet in one place in central London. For New Year's Eve 1992, Marcus and Magid have planned the public presentation of his so-called FutureMouse, at which Marcus' mentor, an old French genetic researcher named Dr. Perret, should attend. The mouse was genetically programmed by Marcus in such a way that it lives exactly seven years and should therefore die at the turn of the millennium .

The Jones and Iqbal families are invited as guests, but other participants are also on their way to the venue near Trafalgar Square , with the aim of boycotting the controversial presentation: Joshua is planning an action with the animal rights association, Hortense Bowden and Ryan Topps want to protest against Marcus Chalfen's interference with God's creation, and the fundamentalist group Millat belongs to is planning to disrupt the performance. While the other members of the group strive to read a sura from the Koran , Millat secretly has bigger plans: He has obtained a revolver to enforce his fundamentalist ideology, which is based heavily on ideas from American Hollywood and Mafia films, by force of arms.

Shortly before the event begins, Samad goes outside briefly to ask Hortense and the other Protestants for some rest. When he comes back into the hall, several things happen at the same time: Millat draws his gun and points it at Dr. Perret, whom Samad recognizes at that moment as the doctor Archie should have executed in 1945. Archie throws himself into the trajectory of the fired projectile, gets injured and saves Dr. Perret life a second time. The genetically modified FutureMouse escapes the hustle and bustle.

The last paragraph of the novel outlines a possible end to the story. Irie and Joshua are now a couple and travel through Jamaica with Irie's daughter, whose paternity remains unclear .

Reception history

With her first work, White Teeth , the author Zadie Smith, a hitherto completely unknown student of literary studies, quickly became a shooting star on the contemporary British literary scene. Even before the manuscript was completed, the publishers paid an unusually large advance - there was talk of 250,000 pounds - for the rights to the debut novel, which quickly reached high sales, won numerous prizes and was translated into several languages. As expected, the novel was received very favorably and praised by renowned authors such as Salman Rushdie as “an astonishingly self-assured debut” ( “an astonishingly assured debut” ).

The reaction of literary critics was also mostly very positive. At most, there was occasional slight criticism of a certain overstretching of the comic drawing of the characters in the novel in certain situations, but this - if at all - was viewed as only a minor weakness of the novel.

The Guardian saw White Teeth in its January 2000 review as a successful debut in the literary tradition of Peter Carey and Salman Rushdie. The Guardian praised the humorous, warm tone of the novel and the successful figure drawing as well as the convincing design of the dialogues.

The New York Times compared White Teeth in its April 2000 review with the works of Charles Dickens , Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi and regarded the novel as one of the most important debut novels of the current generation of writers ( "one of her generation's most precocious debuts" ). The novel is witty, lively and wise ( "quirky, sassy and wise" ); Zadie Smith proves to be an extraordinarily gifted new writer ( "a preternaturally gifted new writer" ), who possesses an instinctive storytelling talent and at the same time has mastered comedy , drama and satire . The New York Times also paid tribute to the realistic design and coherent characterization of the narrative characters in the multicultural drama depicted.

In its April 2001 review, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praised the virtuously assembled story of the novel, which culminated in a “dramaturgically successful showdown”. Zadie Smith introduces herself as a writer with as much sovereignty as Thomas Mann, who was then of the same age, previously did . The novel, written in a humorous tone, about “life and death, the wish to be someone else and the impossibility of fulfilling this wish” shows an impressive level of “knowledge, experience and sophistication” for a 25-year-old author. Reading the novel is demanding and requires the reader to be prepared to read the characters, time and patience as well as a willingness to get involved. For this, however, those readers would be rewarded who would rather orientate themselves towards EM Forster , Nabokov and Shakespeare than towards Nick Hornby or Irvine Welsh .

In its review of September 2006, Die Zeit saw the “sparkling” novel “one of the most remarkable books of the last ten years”. The novel is a "classic of tomorrow" and perhaps the best debut of this generation of writers. “With such a wit, such unsentimental empathy and such a clear sociological view”, “the existence of the modern immigrant and the conflicts between third and first world have never been written in his chest”. The author has a rare talent for skillfully weaving a barely manageable number of threads. She succeeds in placing " burlesque episodes from the Second World War next to a satirical report about the doomsday predictions of Jehovah's Witnesses, which have been postponed again and again, or discussions about the moral question of genetic engineering", "without ever going beyond the scope of the novel".

This review also emphasizes the almost “uncanny skill” of the very young writer, “to shape people of the opposite sex, different ages and completely different life stories into the finest states of mind”. In its criticism, Die Zeit drew the conclusion that “actually no better book” could be recommended than Zadie Smith's debut novel when someone wonders about the assimilation problems of Western Muslims or wants to better understand how our society both demands and constantly complicates adaptation.

First editions

  • Zadie Smith: White Teeth . Hamish Hamilton Verlag, London 2000, ISBN 0-241-14102-8 .
  • Zadie Smith: Show your teeth . Droemer Verlag, Munich 2000. Translation by Ulrike Wasel and Klaus Timmermann. 642 pp. ISBN 3-426-19546-1 .

literature

  • Nick Bentley: Zadie Smith, White Teeth. In: Contemporary British Fiction. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2008, ISBN 978-0-7486-2420-1 , pp. 52-61.
  • Bernd Hirsch: 'Not those kind of Indians, not that kind of black': Identity and History in Zadie Smith's White Teeth. In: Literature in Science and Education, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1, 2005, pp. 39–47.
  • Claire Squires: White Teeth - A Reader's Guide . Continuum Contemporaries, Bloomsbury Academic, New York 2002, ISBN 0-826-45326-0 .

filming

In 2002, Channel 4 aired a film version of the book as a four-part TV series called White Teeth . It was directed by Julian Jarrold , with Om Puri as Samad and Phil Davis as Archie in the lead roles .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See ALL-TIME 100 Novels - White Teeth . On: Time , January 11, 2010. Retrieved July 19, 2015.
  2. ↑ Cf. Roy Sommer: Smith, Zadie. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 540. See also White Teeth by Zadie Smith . In: The Guardian , January 26, 2000. Retrieved July 19, 2015.
  3. ↑ See White Teeth by Zadie Smith . In: The Guardian , 26. January 2000. Retrieved July 19, 2015.
  4. ↑ See White Teeth: Quirky, Sassy and Wise in a London of Exiles . In: The New York Times, April 25, 2000. Retrieved July 19, 2015.
  5. ↑ See what was left of the Empire: Much material for stories . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 10, 2001. Retrieved July 19, 2015.
  6. ↑ See a classic of tomorrow . In: Die Zeit , September 28, 2006. Retrieved July 19, 2015.
  7. ↑ White Teeth sparkles on TV news.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved December 12, 2012.