Back on the terrain of NW, The Embassy of Cambodia is another remarkable work of fiction from Zadie Smith. ` The fact is, if we followed the history of every little country in the world
- in its dramatic as well as its quiet times
- we would have no space left in which to live our own lives or apply ourselves to our necessary tasks, never mind indulge in occasional pleasures, like swimming...` First published this Spring in the New Yorker, The Embassy of Cambodia is a rare & brilliant story that takes us deep into the life of a young woman, Fatou, domestic servant to the Derawals & escapee from one set of hardships to another. Beginning & ending outside the Embassy of Cambodia, which happens to be located in Willesden, NW London, Zadie Smith`s absorbing, moving & wryly observed story suggests how the apparently small things in an ordinary life always raise larger, more extraordinary questions. Praise for NW: ”A triumph.. .modern London is explored in a dazzling portrait.. .every sentence sings”. (Guardian). ” Intensely funny, richly varied, always unexpected. A joyous, optimistic, angry masterpiece. No better English novel will be published this year”. (Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph). ” Absolutely brilliant... So electrically authentic, it reads like surveillance transcripts”. (Lev Grossman, Time). Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975. She is the author of the novels NW, White Teeth, The Autograph Man & On Beauty, & of a collection of essays, Changing My Mind. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People.