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Zadie Smith in New York, October 6, 2018. Brad Barket / Getty Images NORTH AMERICA / AFP
The new novel by British author Zadie Smith, born to an English father and a Jamaican mother, has just been translated into French under the title "Swing Time" by Gallimard. The story of a young Metis woman who, between London and New York, between poverty and wealth, appropriates her multicultural identity that finds its source in Africa.
From her first novel Smiles de loup in 2001, Zadie Smith has emerged as an author who told the world through her different identities. Skin color, social class, community, many themes that also cross his new book entitled Swing Time in tribute to an American musical with Fred Astaire. It is indeed in front of this film that every day two young girls from the same working-class district of North London meet, both born of black and white parents.
Because the question of appearances is once again at the heart of the subject of Zadie Smith. Thus, if her narrator will initially succeed in getting rid of her family, becoming the personal secretary of a star of the Australian song, she will discover to her surprise during a trip to The Gambia that it has very deep ties with the African continent from which its Jamaican ancestors came.
Learning account, memory of the 80s and 90s, Swing Time deconstructs with subtlety a few misconceptions about racism and feminism. Between lightness and gravity, Zadie Smith is the portrait of a woman who advances in life, as one slips on a track carried by the music and dance of the world.