The best-selling author’s tragi-comic new novel, NW, follows four Londoners as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their London is a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end.

Depicting the modern urban zone – familiar to town-dwellers everywhere – NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.

Born in north-west London, Smith continues to live in the area. She is the author of White Teeth, The Autograph Man, and On Beauty.