3.5 stars

I blow hot and cold with Zadie's books; some I like and some I don't. But I can't deny her ability to write. I haven't read any of her non-fiction before. I know at times she can be seen as a controversial figure, but I do try to separate art from artist the best I can, and I was intrigued what I'd find in these essays. So I tried to clear all of my expectations before going in.

The digital copy I had had some slight formatting issues and so I cannot comment on how it'll be formatted within the published book.

I struggled a bit with something but I'm not completely sure how you would fix it. But I struggled to really follow some of it because I didn't have the background context. It was like you need some extra information before you read it to fully understand it. Having said that, unless you're going to keep your essays to yourself there's always going to be someone who doesn't understand 100% of what's going on. So I sort of had to try and let that go ad just enjoy it for its written quality.

I think this is best read by true fans of her. I think they'd appreciate it more. Whereas I didn't have a real emotional connection to it.

She has really opened up her arms to the reader and given them such a broad range of topics. We've got everything from art to beliefs and travelling, obituaries, identity, and the art of writing - there's probably no read who won't find something to relate to or enjoy.

She has pointed out early on that, whilst they are her essays, she has invited the readers to take what they want from them, to agree or disagree, to make their own decisions, rather than saying "this is what I think and therefore you have to think that too."

It's an interesting collection that I think most will enjoy, but I'm on the fence about it. Big fans of hers will love it. If you've got negative opinions on her then definitely not. But if you're like me and on the fence...would I recommend it? After some thought, yes I would. It puts her in a new light. We read these books, we think we know our favourite authors, but we don't. By publishing such a personal collection, Zadie has given us a chance to get to know her better. Whether you end up more towards the positive or negative view on her, that's up to you. But I think she raises some interesting points, and she has proven once again that she really is a phenomenal writer and user of language.

Another collection of Zadie Smith essays, and I felt much the same about them as I did about Feel Free: some didn't interest me at all, some were intriguing, a few were great. I definitely like her writing on books the most and I do want to keep consuming all her thoughts, despite my mixed feelings.

This was a book of small treasures. I loved dipping into its range of essays. Zadie Smith's prose is lovely - there's a looseness to her non=fiction writing that I enjoy. Novels are such an artful product and it's interesting in this non fiction to see more of the process and the mind and person behind the books. I particulalry enjoyed her thoughts about books and reading especially the anecdote about buying a new copy of a book because finding the copy you already own is too difficult. Dead and Alive is much recommended for those interested in writing, ideas and the world.

Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith is an eclectic collection of essays covers a variety of topics. It includes essays on the work of Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, Celia Paul and Lucian Freud, and Toyin Ojih Odutola - the latter of which provides some insightful reflections on slavery in West Africa and its impact.

Really well written, and I also enjoyed how Zadie used works of art, artists and musicians (including the film Tár, Michael Jackson, and Stormzy), as a starting point to analyse a myriad of concepts.

I found the essays where she discussed creative writing, fiction, our selfhood and identities, slavery, algorithms, and the digital age interesting. Being a Londoner, I loved her reflections on NW London, and city life more broadly.

I’ve read some of Zadie’s previous books, mostly her fiction titles (like Swing Time, and White Teeth). She’s an intelligent and talented writer, and this was a fascinating read.

With thanks to Penguin UK and NetGalley for the ARC.

One of the things I like most about Zadie Smith's essays is that she writes them as she does her novels. "When I am writing I am trying to convey the rhythms, operations and movements of my mind in the face of allthatthereis." Each essay takes as its subject the exploration of a subject, and in this way rather than telling you what to think, she allows you the space to think alongside her.

Her prose is conversational, stream of consciousness, sharpened by her characteristic literary clarity. Each standalone piece is thought-provoking in the best way, because persuasion is not the point: it's simply the opportunity to take in another’s unique point of view.

In her speech on receiving the PEN Literary Service Award, Smith ponders her contribution to the literary world. She settles on this: "I want to give readers a human language fit for their use, and to recognise, in my own use of language, the sacred nature of each and every human being."

This is her gift to writers (and readers) everywhere: to make you feel as if you too can write with confidence, not because you must write the truth, but because you write your truth.

This review will be shared on my Substack on 27/10/2025:

Zadie Smith comes and goes. This is mostly by design. Smith is not an author you’re likely to see everywhere. Her novels rarely feature on “BookTok” (though, if they do, it is almost always White Teeth). She has no Substack. In fact, she is not on social media at all. Smith rarely appears in places other authors might: acting as an interlocutor for other authors at their events, as a talking head to discuss some literary controversy, or writing hot-button opinion pieces for the newspaper. Instead, between novels, Smith can be found in the pages of a few choice publications: The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books most commonly. Here Smith can be tasked with an array of different subjects, where she gives each idea time to marinate, and this is one of Smith’s greatest gifts; as a writer she never belittles a subject, never looks down on what she’s discussing. This is not to be confused with always liking something, or always thinking it has merit, but instead, Smith holds every subject up to the light and gives it sufficient time.

This talent, for pulling together roving subjects, is what made Smith’s last collection of essays, Feel Free, so exciting. It evidenced Smith’s unique ability to move between cultural artefacts, a perfect observer who could examine American sketch comedy as intensely as the climate crisis, or Justin Bieber, or J.G. Ballard. Despite many of the pieces having been published elsewhere, the curation of Feel Free made the subjects feel new in that they appeared to speak to each other. Astute observations about Mark Zuckerberg, Jay-Z, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye melded with literary insight, and some brilliant personal essays on living in Rome or in a council estate in North West London. In all, it felt vibrant and became a book that could be returned to regularly.

Dead or Alive, Smith’s latest collection of essays, is less eclectic. Its subjects are less varied, but are still, for the most part, engaging. In these essays, pulled from her published writing over the last seven years, Smith covers the ground that proved most successful in Feel Free: art, literature, and film. Her take on Lydia Tár as an art monster in Todd Field’s Oscar-nominated film from 2022 is perhaps her most interesting. As is her look at the artist Celia Paul, who has published two excellent memoirs in recent memory, and established herself as a painter and writer outside of her connection to certain male artists. Her celebratory take on Stormzy’s historic 2019 Glastonbury headline set, which positions the rapper as a “young black king” in the vein of a Shakespearean protagonist, acts as a reminder of Smith’s great ability too. “Those who believe in the divine right of kings will see a youth with royal blood running through him that is older even than England itself,” Smith writes. “But the one the people call Stormzy is not satisfied with appearances: he is our leader if only he leads us in the field.” Elsewhere, her descriptions of living in New York during times of tragedy and her reflections on her teenage years are also distinct bright spots.

Yet, other essays are harder to swallow. One particular essay that portends to be a “defence of fiction” opens up the question of fiction and identity, a question often debated, if not by people in real life then on the internet at least. “Full disclosure”, Smith writes, “what insults my soul is the idea — popular in the culture now, and presented in widely variant degrees of complexity — that we can and should only write about people who are fundamentally ‘like’ us: racially, sexually, genetically, nationally, politically, personally.” I might question just how popular that idea is nowadays. Though, it certainly was in, say, 2017. Now, it seems most self-respecting critics and authors have moved past this idea and have done so without any of the Lionel-Shriver-in-a-Sombrero theatrics.

Still, Smith’s assertion that fiction is open to anyone is a valid one — and a position I happen to agree with — but her attempts, more than once, to suggest some unknown audience is going to come for her because she writes so freely begin to feel a bit grating. Whilst discussing her second novel, The Autograph Man, Smith lays out that her protagonist, Alex Li, is quite far from her in many ways; he’s a half-Jewish, half-Chinese writer who is prone to melancholy and yet, of all her protagonists, Smith believes Li is the most like her. “We don’t share the same gods”, she writes. “We don’t share the same race or gender. But he is part of my soul. And fiction is one of the few places left on earth where a crazy sentence like that makes any sense at all.”

Here, Smith levels out the truth of fiction, one that might even be summed up in the perhaps misunderstood P.D. James quote: “All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.” As I understand it, this is less to do with the kind of autobiographical connections Smith references in her essay, and has more to do with what we might call an emotional autobiography. Li and Smith share attributes, feelings, and maybe, at times, opinions, but it comes down to the fact that a writer writing about sadness can only really summon their own experience of that emotion to put it down on paper. Even if that sadness in their book is brought about by experiences totally alien to the author, the bare bones of it — the way it feels — can only really come from how they have felt sadness. This, as a line of thought, is distinctly interesting, but Smith chooses, instead, to call out those who might question why a half-Jamaican, half-English woman would allow Alex Li to “take up space” where “a ‘real’ half-Jewish, half-Chinese fictional character might be.” Instead, Smith suggests in the current world of fiction, “we simply don’t want or need novels like [hers] anymore”. All these small barbs — though sparing — can’t help but read as a misplaced self-pity and leave a sour taste in the mouth when the essay is done. Who exactly she is responding to remains a mystery. Though, to be fair, Smith has her detractors — famously so, if you were online the day Andrea Long Chu dropped her review of The Fraud for Vulture in 2023 — but it still feels jarring that Smith, who has remained almost entirely absent from online discourse, seems so preoccupied with them when, really, she has no reason to be.

Also included is Smith’s essay on student protests published in The New Yorker in May of this year: “Shibboleth”. Widely criticised for failing to meet the moment, Smith centres her discussion on the language of protest. This came in the wake of increased violence against pro-Palestinian encampments on American college campuses. Smith, in her essay, wonders how a hypothetical Jewish student might feel wandering any of these campuses, and whether their safety should be a casualty of calling for the end of a genocide. This straw-man argument relies on hypotheticals and negates the fact that many of the protestors on American campuses were Jewish themselves; a theoretical thread that seems below Smith. But that’s all the essay seems to be. It ties itself in knots to make a strange point of considering “language and rhetoric” as “weapons of mass destruction” when it comes to Israel and Palestine, but mostly ignores the onslaught of physical violence against Palestinians in Gaza. In such a heated moment, a discussion of language was, perhaps, not totally apt — at least not one that routinely trips over itself by making a strange argument for both sides in the face of an ongoing genocide.

This makes Dead or Alive an uneven read. While it has glimmers of Smith’s talent as a writer, it also evidences a strange decline into a bizarre intellectual territory in which Smith picks odd arguments. I suppose it does show Smith’s talent as a writer that, even when I disagreed with her, the essays were still well written (not including “Shibboleth”), but the pull of Feel Free and, indeed, Smith’s short collection of essays written during the pandemic, Intimations, is the way her mind turns things over. This is not necessarily a talent Smith has lost. The frustration, in fact, with Dead or Alive perhaps comes from the fact that Smith’s most recent novel, The Fraud, was one of her best. A finely crafted Victorian-style historical novel that skewered those classic works of literature by placing at its centre what those previous novels refused to acknowledge. It, too, managed to find a certain relevance as well, as the real-life Tichborne case that sits at the novel’s core came to, as Smith puts it in an essay in Dead or Alive, represent “Trump, who was at the forefront of [her] mind” given the hysteria and misinformation that surrounded the 45th President of the United States and the real-life historical trial. The Fraud, to my mind, is a daring and bold novel, one both funny and tragic, that puts at its centre a white Scottish housekeeper and Jamaican man who grew up as a slave on a sugar plantation. It seems odd that the journey to The Fraud overlaps with the period in which Smith wrote these essays.

It’s also true that, as a fan of Feel Free, I can’t help but feel like Dead or Alive is a lesser book. Perhaps it isn’t fair to chastise one book for not being like another, but when one collection evidences a distinctly unique ability to see things so acutely and the other feels like a bizarre provocation, the comparison is hard to resist. It doesn’t help, either, that Dead or Alive doesn’t feel as well curated. Its divided sections — “Eyeballing”, “Considering”, “Reconsidering”, “Mourning”, and “Confessing” — feel less established than previous collections. Which means Dead or Alive ends up a less enthralling essay collection, and that feels like a shame from a writer who is working at the height of her powers in the most recent novel. In the end, Dead or Alive reads less like a vital statement from one of our best thinkers, and more like the sound of a brilliant mind talking itself in circles.

Dead and Alive is a wide-ranging and deeply thoughtful essay collection from Zadie Smith, covering everything from art, politics, and pop culture to personal memory.

This was my first time reading Zadie Smith, and I can now say with certainty that her nonfiction suits me perfectly. Dead and Alive is everything I want an essay collection to be - curious, confident, personal, and intellectually broad.

There were some essays that stood out to me more than others, as it should be. I especially liked Under the Banner of New York and Michael: Before and After. Both struck a perfect balance between cultural commentary and emotional insight, and I found myself rereading passages just to sit with them a little longer.
I also enjoyed Mrs. Windsor, or The Queen in the Minds of Her People, as well as the obituaries written for famous writers.

In short, this is exactly how an essay collection should be constructed and executed, in my opinion. The range of topics never feels scattered - instead, it feels like stepping directly into someone’s mind. It was absolutely fascinating to wander around this particular mind and headspace.

Zadie Smith continued to prove that she has unmatched range and intellect in Dead and Alive. It was such a refreshing read with a unique approach to quite a range of topics. Every sentence feels considered, every paragraph layered with implication. This collection is a bold, introspective offering from one of contemporary literature’s most fearless voices.
Thank you to Penguin Books South Africa and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

Reading into someone’s collection of essays, especially those that are rich and wide-reaching in its subjects, is like stepping into said person’s mind. And in this case, it was quite delightful. From eyeballing art, to considering cities and countries, to reconsidering those places (and perhaps our own convictions and beliefs), to mourning talented souls that have passed before us, and confessing what writing is among others… It is honest, argumentative, it can be defensive at times, but hey, I guess that’s what peeking into someone’s mind will feel like, and perhaps if there is a constant throughout is that you can tell Smith is not one to not write what she thinks as clearly as she can.

As with collections of anything, I enjoyed some more than the others. The first part, Eyeballing, was close to being my favourite, due to its subject of interest. Think going into a museum, or a cinema, or a live concert, then afterwards having a very good conversation with someone about how that work relates to philosophy, questioning oppression, decolonisation, that makes you think and appreciate the work even more than you already were. Zadie Smith turns works of art - and arguably, the artists themselves - into a deep study. Upon reflecting on Toyin Ojih Odutola’s work, she wrote:

"We know we don’t want to be victims of history. We know we refuse to be slaves. But do we want to be masters – to behave like masters? To expect as they expect? To be as tranquil and entitled as they are? To claim as righteous our decision not to include them in our human considerations? Are we content that all our attacks on them be ad hominem, as they once spoke of us?"

The second part, Considering, while the essay on Tar is the one that explicitly discusses generational clash, Fascinated to Presume: In Defence of Fiction is where I’m most grateful for a view that I wasn’t familiar with. She wrote,

"What would our debates about fiction look like, I sometimes wonder, if our preferred verbal container for the phenomenon of writing about others was not ‘cultural appropriation’ but rather ‘interpersonal voyeurism’ or ‘profound other-fascination’ or even ‘cross-epidermal reanimation’?"

Also, what is it about cities that makes writers - and all of us frankly - go ohh and ahh? Here, Smith discusses New York (in the wake of a killing in Halloween 2017), Egypt and the campaign to release the novelist Ahmed Naji. Some Notes on Mediated Time – I was excited for the opening paragraphs of this, but it turned out to be on the algorithm and how much the internet takes hold of our lives right now, which isn’t bad, but is a slight detour from mediating about growing old.

The third part: Reconsidering - I don’t know how I feel about the one essay on Gaza… and she made it clear that she doesn’t care what people think. She wrote: It is my view that my personal views have no more weight than an ear of corn in this particular essay – but is that true? Considering being one of the most influential writers now, really does she think it doesn’t carry any weight?

Lastly, on Confessing, which is the last part. In one of the essays, Smith reflects on being given the award for literary service, while she had avoided any service, joint letters, campaigns, and other things that are not writing. At this point in the book, you would have picked it up, and truly it stacked up with the things she’s written about herself and her view in the previous essays. I admire the essays in this chapter too, for her love and obsession towards writing just shine throughout.

"Art is one of the ways we reveal the peculiarities of consciousness – for me it’s the clearest way. It’s through other people’s novels, other people’s paintings, other people’s poems and other people’s music that I am made aware that everybody is not like anyone else."

It was an interesting and quite broad collection of essays. And as Smith herself wrote in the foreword, as a reader we have the absolute freedom to wander around this book.

I have read Zadie Smith in the past, enjoyed her stories, and Iove her writing style, but this was absolutely stunning. I really enjoyed the eclectic scope of essays. From the film, Tar, Hilary Mantel, social media, to politics and more. It was almost as if Zadie wrote this book with my own interests in mind. That’s how much I loved it.

This read FRESH, I know such topics have been touched on before but not like this. I honestly didn’t have any wild expectations when I started but I can honestly say I am buying a copy for myself and others. It was the boost I didn’t know I needed.

This is my favourite Zadie Smith book including her novels.
I feel closer to her non-fiction, where she comfortably brings the qualities of her novels.
In this collection, there is a wide range of essays which are relatable, thought-provoking, intellectual or literary (or all at the same time).

This book kept me great company, and I cannot wait to read Smith’s next book.

Given that I had not then liked “The Fraud” all that much, this collection of essays reconciled me with my idea of Zadie Smith. The part I enjoyed the most was clearly the one on the Obituaries of some famous writers, on which I agree with most of Smith's opinions, although I have a huge gap to fill as far as Hilary Mantel is concerned. The couple of essays that refer to the pandemic however, always have the effect of a dystopia for me, as if I can't believe we survived that too....

Considerato che "The Fraud" non mi era poi piaciuto tantissimo, questa raccolta di saggi mi ha riconciliato con la mia idea di Zadie Smith. La parte che mi é piaciuta di piú é stata chiaramente quella sugli Obituaries di alcuni famosi scrittori, sui quali condivido la maggior parte delle opinioni della Smith, pur avendo una grandissima lacuna da colmare per quello che riguarda Hilary Mantel. Il paio di saggi che fanno riferimento alla pandemia comunque, mi fanno sempre l'effetto di una distopia, come se non riuscissi a crederci che siamo sopravvissuti anche a questo...

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

Zadie Smith is a wonderful writer and a wonderful essayist. "Dead and Alive" is wide-ranging, thought provoking, and entertaining. I enjoyed it tremendously.

Dead and Alive is a new collection of essays by Zadie Smith. Smith writes on many topics including Celia Paul, Michael Jackson, Queen Elizabeth II, New York, being a writer and there are some memorial pieces on authors who have died such as Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Martin Amis and Hilary Mantel.

This essay collection was truly phenomenal and I loved every second. Since finishing the essays I keep thinking about this collection as a whole and I feel so much towards it. This is a must read for anyone who likes reading essays/commentary. I loved reading the essays on mourning with the one on Joan Didion being a favourite. I also loved reading about the Egyptian novelist, Ahmed Naji. The commentary on phones and social media was particularly impactful and I just think this whole collection was so strong. Zadie Smith is not afraid to say what she believes in and I’m going to be thinking about this collection for a long time.

I really enjoyed Zadie Smiths novels and essays for many years. I’m always on the lookout for a new book from her because her writing is so beautiful, crisp, and informative Very much enjoyed this new collection of essays and I know readers will too!

I think we should be grateful that essay collections like Zadie Smith’s are still being published. They seem a slightly old-fashioned idea in the world of algorithms, which is one of the (negative) themes of the book. What would it take to give an essay collection 5 stars? To have been both engaged by her writing about things you already knew something about (the obituaries here) and intrigued by the essays about things that are new to you (e.g. the long essay on Celia Paul for me).. Both of these are true of Dead and Alive. She has a directness, a commitment and a lightness of touch that we should treasure.

Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith is a perceptive and wide-ranging essay collection which brings together her unique experiences and insights.

A comprehensive collection of fascinating essays concerning very diverse subjects, familiar and famous, and the more esoteric

<i><blockquote>I have also tried to leave these essays as wide open as possible... the house of an essay may sometimes be strangely shaped or have a complicated floor plan - but the door is open [...] Reader, I do not know your name - but you are welcome.

But I've learned to think of doubt as an asset. There are some uses to never being satisfied or extremely confident in yourself. You keep trying.</i></blockquote>

The ending to Smith's introduction quoted above about open doors seems deliberately pointed without being aggressive: these essays are, indeed, welcoming, not didactic, questioning without lacking point and opinion - but in a world that is increasingly hostile to 'others', to alternative views and opinions, it also feels like Smith is laying out her open-armed politics as well as introducing a hospitable book.

Collecting together essays, speeches, obituaries to writers (Toni Morrison, Martin Amis, Philip Roth, Hilary Mantel, Joan Didion) and articles, this is an incisive way in to the mind and world of Smith. The pieces seem to go back to 2019, include some pandemic pieces, and the latest is the hopeful piece written on 4 July 2024 - the date of the UK election. The subject matter is wonderfully eclectic from essays on visual art, women artists as muses, a defence of urban living, musings on history and the writing of [book:The Fraud|66086834] to political essays: the climate crisis, Gaza, Tufton Street, capitalism, and the vision of what the current Labour government seems to have forgotten it once stood for.

Through it all is a strong and individual voice and a clear sense of a mind that is still curious and fascinated by our world. Unashamedly left-wing, socialist and multicultural, what strikes me most is the lack of anger here and a narrative of community, vision, ethics and open-hearted humanity. I was a little disappointed in Smith's previous collection [book:Feel Free: Essays|35581653] which felt a bit constricted and unfinished to me - this one is exactly what I wanted from Smith.