British writer Zadie Smith has published only two novels: White Teeth, winner of two major literary awards and with over one million copies in print, and The Autograph Man. Smith burst into the international fiction scene with the publication of her debut novel, White Teeth, in 2000, and was immediately hailed as a new voice in British literature. The half-Jamaican Smith has since been lauded for her multicultural exploration in White Teeth, which was written during her years as an undergraduate at Cambridge University.

Smith grew up in Willesden Green, a multiethnic neighborhood northwest of London. Her English father and Jamaican mother divorced when she was fourteen years old. "I didn't always write stories when I was young," Smith admitted in an online interview with Bold Type Magazine. "I wrote some, but I've never been prolific. From the age of five to fifteen, I really wanted to be a...