![]() ![]() There is something reassuring about the enduring nature of her old preoccupations-death, and time. ![]() I don’t think they should be so surprised Zadie Smith has been prepared for this moment for years. Said essays often included a confessional from the authors about their inability to read a book, let alone write a single word. Meanwhile, I read other essays that half-jokingly begrudged Smith’s productivity during a pandemic. In the book’s foreword, Smith writes of turning to Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations not as a matter of intellectual enquiry but as a form of practical instruction, and so it was how I read Intimations when it arrived in my letterbox three months later. ![]() In the United States, another murder of another Black man dominated the headlines, leading to a resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests around the world. ![]() I called the bookshop to pre-order Intimations in May 2020 as one lockdown followed another, and the global death toll continued to rise. Zadie Smith: ‘People always say that as if it’s not the only thing that’s going to happen to you.’ Zadie Smith: ‘My preoccupation when I was young was death. Reviewed: Zadie Smith, Intimations, Penguin ![]()
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