Cover image for White teeth : a novel
White teeth : a novel
Title:
White teeth : a novel
ISBN:
9780375703867

9781417626281
Edition:
1st Vintage International ed.
Publication Information:
New York : Vintage International, 2001, ©2000
Physical Description:
448 pages ; 21 cm
General Note:
"Originally published ... by Hamish Hamilton, London, and subsequently ... by Random House, Inc., New York, in 2000"--Title page verso.
Contents:
Acknowledgments -- Archie 1974, 1945: The peculiar second marriage of Archie Jones ; Teething trouble ; Two families ; Three coming ; The root canals of Alfred Archibald Jones and Samad Miah Iqbal -- Samad 1984, 1857: The temptation of Samad Iqbal ; Molars ; Mitosis ; Mutiny! ; The root canals of Mangal Pande -- Irie 1990, 1907: The miseducation of Irie Jones ; Canines : the ripping teeth ; The root canals of Hortense Bowden ; More English than the English ; Chalfenism versus Bowdenism -- Magid, Millat, And Marcus 1992, 1999: The return of Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim Iqbal ; Crisis talks and eleventh-hour tactics ; The end of history versus the last man ; Final space ; Of mice and memory.
Reading Level:
960 L Lexile
Summary:
On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie--working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt--is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs on the window, he gives Archie another chance at life and sets in motion this richly imagined, uproariously funny novel. Epic and intimate, hilarious and poignant, White Teeth is the story of two North London families--one headed by Archie, the other by Archie's best friend, a Muslim Bengali named Samad Iqbal. Pals since they served together in World War II, Archie and Samad are a decidedly unlikely pair. Plodding Archie is typical in every way until he marries Clara, a beautiful, toothless Jamaican woman half his age, and the couple have a daughter named Irie (the Jamaican word for "no problem"). Samad--devoutly Muslim, hopelessly "foreign"--weds the feisty and always suspicious Alsana in a prearranged union. They have twin sons named Millat and Magid, one a pot-smoking punk-cum-militant Muslim and the other an insufferable science nerd. The riotous and tortured histories of the Joneses and the Iqbals are fundamentally intertwined, capturing an empire's worth of cultural identity, history, and hope.
Holds: