Culture | New fiction
Zadie Smith’s new novel revives a 150-year-old court case
What is the populist appeal of elite men who delude the masses?
Zadie Smith, who has just written a historical novel, never planned to. She saw the genre as “by nature a conservative form”, guided by nostalgia for a time rather unlike the multicultural world of her life and books.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “A novelist’s novelty”
Culture September 9th 2023
- Thanks to Morgan Wallen, country music’s popularity has surged
- Simon Schama’s “Foreign Bodies” tracks the history of vaccines
- Lots of people mourn when famous writers and musicians die. Why?
- Zadie Smith’s new novel revives a 150-year-old court case
- A history of the papacy and its relationship with Rome
- Trevor Noah’s tour spotlights South African comedy
From the September 9th 2023 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
Pep Guardiola, football’s greatest coach, is in a bind
A serial winner is learning how to lose
The Economist’s word of the year for 2024
The Greeks knew how to talk about politics and power
What do feta, cucumbers and cottage cheese have in common?
Social media and the internet are changing how people cook and relate to food
Germany’s former chancellor sets out to restore her reputation
But her new memoir is unlikely to change her critics’ minds
The best books of 2024, as chosen by The Economist
Readers will never think the same way again about games, horses and spies
What to read to understand Elon Musk
The world’s richest man was shaped by science fiction