Smile - Softcover

Paul Smail

3.29

21 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852426306 ISBN 13: 9781852426309

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 1999

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?You can call me Sma?l I insisted, drawing the word out, leaving a good gap between the a and the i with its two dots: Smy-eel. It had been a while since I?d pronounced my name the Arab way... I usually cheat a bit, and pronounce it the stylish English way, aspirating like the English do, all posh, and smiling: Smile... I can only get so far by being crafty, rubbing out those two dots on the i and touching up my photo, I can get given an interview but sooner or later I?ve got to show up in the flesh... An A-rab, in other words? Inspired by his love for literature, the narrator experiences life through the characters of his favourite writers, Shakespeare, Conrad and Melville. A literary sensation when first published in France, Smile chronicles everyday racism as experienced by a young Arab man in Paris today. Smile is a bitter, poignant book that, like all great writing, stays in the mind long after you have finished reading it.

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Review:

?A short, sharp dose of post-La Haine reality with nods to Moby Dick and Genet; the writing has a restless quality not easily forgotten? i-D ?A knife in the gut of contemporary French civilisation... a startling talent? Independent ?[An] impressive and beautifully written debut, an angry, shaking fist of a book? The Times

About the Author:

Paul Sma�l is the pseudonym for a writer who, having lived in Paris for many years, has now returned to his native Morocco. Smile is his first novel and was published in France in 1997. His second novel, Casa, la Casa, was published in 1998.

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