The Voice of Zadie Smith

Like the narrator of her new novel “Swing Time,” Zadie Smith was a talented singer from an early age. “In films and photographs,” says her narrator, “I had seen white men sitting at their pianos as black girls stood by them, singing. Oh, I wanted to be like those girls!”

Zadie was, for a time. She worked as a cabaret singer to earn money while studying at King’s College, Cambridge. Her love of the American songbook and of the black-and-white movie musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers that used to air on BBC 4 are interests she shares with her novel’s narrator. “The most autobiographical part in the book,” Zadie tells me, “are the passions.”

From “The Pieces of Zadie Smith” by Jeffrey Eugenides; Photo by Jackie Nickerson (@jackie_nickerson)

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