'Smith does more than illuminate what we're going through right now. '' - O, The Oprah Magazine, Best Books of 2020 'While quarantined amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Smith penned six dazzling, trenchant essays burrowing deep into our contemporary culture of disease and upheaval and reflecting on what was 'once necessary' that now 'appears inessential. The personal and political intermingle for a powerful indictment of America's social systems.' - TIME, The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 Intimations is out now via Penguin Books.Description ' slim collection of essays captures this peculiar moment with startling clarity. And writing means being overheard.'Īnd aren't we grateful for the opportunity to listen in. 'But I did come out with two invaluable intimations. 'Since that moment, one form of crisis has collided with another, and I am no more a Stoic now than I was when I opened that ancient book,' she notes at the opening of her new collection of essays. At the very least a chance to reflect without the buzzing of digitally incurred stress or distraction.Īs for Smith, she turned to Marcus Aurelius's notes on stoic philosophy, immortalised in the book Meditations, at the beginning of the Coronavirus crisis. But right about now it still seems to me a welcome respite from the siphon of social media. It's also fairly uncommon to find a book that responds so instantaneously to the times at hand. It's kind of unusual, these days, when you think about it. Unlike many public intellectuals, Smith is not on Instagram or Twitter, meaning we must wait for published articles, volumes, or the occasional talk - to gain access to her thoughts. These are above all personal essays: small by definition, short by necessity.' What I’ve tried to do is organise some of the feelings and thoughts that events, so far, have provoked in me, in those scraps of time the year itself has allowed. 'This is not any of those – the year isn’t halfway done. 'There will be many books written about the year 2020: historical, analytical, political as well as comprehensive accounts,' Smith writes in the foreword to Intimations. Her new book of essays, Intimations, provides somewhat of answer. So in this year (so far) that has changed the ways we see our worlds and drawn analyses from myriad angles, many of her readers - myself included - have wondered, what is Smith's? The writer of White Teeth, On Beauty and Changing My Mind has a way of crystallising thoughts, feelings and assumptions you perhaps didn't even know you possessed, while only intending to speak for her own.

Zadie smith intimations six essays