Dead and Alive

“Few writers are as dazzling and versatile as Smith, whose new collection of essays, some previously published in the New Yorker, highlights the necessity of criticism at a moment when critical thinking teeters across the West and authoritarian forces are flexing their power . . . Smith asks moral questions but rarely answers them, true to the confusion of our time. With the act of reading books in worldwide decline, Smith pushes back in a cool, Joan Didion-like analysis of where we’ve been and where we’re headed.” —TIME, A Must-Read Book of the Year

“Filled with Smith’s crisp observations, Dead and Alive is a smart, somber book . . . There’s pleasure in watching a novelist wired to see all sides at once wrangle with her own dynamic subjectivity; what’s compelling is the effort of eliciting in herself the most honest possible take. As in her previous essay collections, some of the best moments in Dead and Alive are found in her more personal and elegiac writings . . . Writing criticism—offering an opinion, putting one’s skin in the game—is a form of stewardship to the commons, of showing up to that imperiled space in which Cultural Luminaries might decide to join students in speaking out against injustice, however imperfectly, because they feel an ethical imperative to do so: solidarity with speech. In Dead and Alive, Smith reminds us that this place still exists, even as its lights flicker and dim.” —Megan O’Grady, The New York Times Book Review

“Eclectic in her tastes, centrifugal in her style, Smith as an essayist loves to stretch her frame.” ―Financial Times

“Smith remains one of the finest critics working today, and her insights are equally prescient at grand and small scales. Her essay on Tár, a Pulitzer finalist, is a generation-defining meditation on the nascent optimism and inescapable moral compromise which befalls most youthful revolutions . . . Smith remains a categorical optimist. Though her interventions poke holes in many sacred precepts, they evince a fundamentally hopeful premise: so long as we can identify the weak spots in our moral and intellectual lives, we can remedy them. We are free to do so; this freedom is our burden. It’s an audacious, existentialist notion, and it’s difficult to think of another writer whose voice remains so effortlessly spry and principled in pursuit of it.” —Brooklyn Rail

“It’s hard to think of a living essayist who is better company on the page―walking you through her thoughts, curious about everything and everyone, including (unusually) the reader.” ―Sunday Times

“Written between 2016 and 2025, these often compelling essays are divided into five sections: Eyeballing, Considering, Reconsidering, Mourning, and Confessing. That means pieces on visual artists like Kara Walker and films like Tár, a memorial for Wolf Hall author Hilary Mantel, and a new essay about technology that is one of the book’s high points . . . Smith leaves room for disagreement and still maintains her high-minded humanistic ideas.” —Vulture

“Smith is unsatisfied with reactive stances, whether that be in regard to the problem of consciousness or current events, and she demands that everything be broken down, examined and then reassembled. Thanks to her writing’s wry humor and compassion, the breaking down of positions goes down much better than you would assume it might, and when the worldview she has tackled has been put back together, you find yourself changed. The basic fact of your stance might not be any different, but your understanding of it most certainly will be—as well as your understanding of yourself and others. This is Smith’s most consequential publication in years . . . In Dead and Alive, Smith returns to essay-writing with a hammer.” —BookPage

“Novelist and critic Smith brings an incisive eye and keen wit to art, music, fiction, politics, and more in this wide-ranging essay collection . . . Smith delivers original insights couched in sly, artful prose . . . Readers will be rewarded by this unforgettable collection.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Smith is a consummate and perpetual essayist. Her fourth collection contains 30 penetrating, nimble, witty, and affecting pieces, most from the past half-dozen years . . . A treasury of candid, thoughtful, caring, and exhilarating inquires.” —Booklist

“Smith herself has now joined the elite tier of authors . . . She is, often, a vivid and rigorous thinker, her best pieces here radiant with curiosity, and a serious but not self-serious grappling with the terror and anxiety of modern life.” —Observer

“[Dead and Alive] showcases a writer whose curiosity remains undimmed. [Zadie Smith] effortlessly transitions from art critique–focusing on Toyin Ojih Odutola and Kara Walker–to musings on politics, grief and pop culture, including reflections on the artistic drama Tár or Stormzy’s Glastonbury performance.” —The Mirror

“Zadie Smith once again confirms that she is among the most expert essayists of her generation. In Dead and Alive, her prose, which once animated fictional worlds in White Teeth and Swing Time, now turns its sharp observational lens toward real life—our politics, our technologies and our shared fragility. The result is an often melancholy meditation on what it means to stay human amid the noise of the digital age . . . Smith has written a generous, fiercely intelligent collection that reminds us why essays matter.” —The Standard