Why are generations at war with each other? W...

What can Little Women teach modern boys about sisterhood? How does food become a language of love and grief? How does writing in a third language shape your creative rhythm? And why can finishing a masterpiece feel like a tragedy?This week on Ask Penguin, Rhianna is joined by bes ...  Show more

How do you begin breaking down a 600-page American epic to bring it to the screen? How did Florence Pugh capture the essence of the central character Cathy? How did John Steinbeck’s secret writing journals help the screenwriters? And what should you read next if you loved reading ...  Show more

Zadie Smith is a British novelist, essayist, and short story writer. She is the author of six novels and her first book White Teeth was completed during her final year at Cambridge University. Published in 2000, White Teeth became an instant international bestseller - winning num ...  Show more

Zadie Smith grew up in north west London and studied English at Cambridge University. After a publisher’s bidding war when she was just 21, her debut novel White Teeth became a huge critical and commercial hit on publication in 2000 and won several awards including the Orange Pri ...  Show more

Last fall, Zadie Smith published her prescient historical novel The Fraud. We return to our conversation with the beloved author this week, on the heels of our latest sit-down with writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner. At the top, Smith details her most recent book (7:48), her instinctiv ...  Show more

This week David talks to the novelist Zadie Smith about Charles Dickens: what he means to her, why we still read him, and what’s missing from the Dickensian view of the world. It’s a conversation about other writers as well – Turgenev, George Orwell and Toni Morrison – and about ...  Show more