Only some of these titles tell happy stories, but they are all reminders of what is possible in metropolises.
Smith is from northwest London, which is the setting for her breakout first novel, White Teeth. In her fourth book, NW, published 12 years later, she returns to her old stomping grounds. The book tracks four friends, all trying to gain distance-geographical and metaphysical-from the housing project where they grew up. The friends' paths diverge and converge, in a gritty urban landscape evoked by
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