“Smart, somber . . . There’s pleasure in watching a novelist wired to see all sides at once wrangle with her own dynamic subjectivity.”
– The New York Times Book Review

A profound and unparalleled literary voice, Zadie Smith returns with a resounding collection of essays

In this eagerly awaited new collection, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects that have captured her attention in recent years.

She takes an exhilaratingly close look at artists Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kara Walker and Celia Paul. She invites us along to the movies, to see and to think about Tár, and to New York to reflect on the spontaneous moments that connect us. She takes us on a walk down Kilburn High Road in her beloved North-West London and welcomes us to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison. She considers changes of government on both sides of the Atlantic – and the meaning of “the commons” in all our lives.

Throughout this thrilling collection, Zadie Smith shows us once again her unrivalled ability to think through critically and humanely some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times.

BIO

Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, Swing Time, and The Fraud; as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia; four collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free, Intimations, and Dead and Alive; a collection of short stories, Grand Union; and a play, The Wife of Willesden, adapted from Chaucer. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie Smith was born in north-west London, where she still lives.

REVIEWS

“Filled with Smith’s crisp observations, Dead and Alive is a smart, somber book . . . There’s pleasure in watching a novelist wired to see all sides at once wrangle with her own dynamic subjectivity; what’s compelling is the effort of eliciting in herself the most honest possible take. As in her previous essay collections, some of the best moments in Dead and Alive are found in her more personal and elegiac writings . . . Writing criticism—offering an opinion, putting one’s skin in the game—is a form of stewardship to the commons, of showing up to that imperiled space in which Cultural Luminaries might decide to join students in speaking out against injustice, however imperfectly, because they feel an ethical imperative to do so: solidarity with speech. In Dead and Alive, Smith reminds us that this place still exists, even as its lights flicker and dim.” -- Megan O’Grady, The New York Times Book Review

“Eclectic in her tastes, centrifugal in her style, Smith as an essayist loves to stretch her frame.” -- Financial Times

“Smith remains one of the finest critics working today, and her insights are equally prescient at grand and small scales. Her essay on Tár, a Pulitzer finalist, is a generation-defining meditation on the nascent optimism and inescapable moral compromise which befalls most youthful revolutions . . . Smith remains a categorical optimist. Though her interventions poke holes in many sacred precepts, they evince a fundamentally hopeful premise: so long as we can identify the weak spots in our moral and intellectual lives, we can remedy them. We are free to do so; this freedom is our burden. It’s an audacious, existentialist notion, and it’s difficult to think of another writer whose voice remains so effortlessly spry and principled in pursuit of it.” -- Brooklyn Rail

“It’s hard to think of a living essayist who is better company on the page―walking you through her thoughts, curious about everything and everyone, including (unusually) the reader.” -- Sunday Times

[H]  Penguin Press  /  October 28, 2025

1.5" H x 9.5" L x 6.3" W (1.3 lbs) 352 pages