Zadie Smith: NW

The nineties, ecstatic decade!

Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources...

The window logs Kilburn’s skyline. Ungentrified, ungentrifiable. Boom and bust never come here. Here bust is permanent. Empty State Empire, empty Odeon, graffiti-streaked sidings rising and falling like a rickety roller-coaster. Higgledy-piggledy rooftops and chimneys, some high, some low, packed tightly, shaken fags in a box...

It filled her with panic and rage to see her spoilt children sat upon the floor, flicking through past images, moving images, of themselves, on their father’s phone, an experience of self-awareness literally unknown in the history of human existence – outside dream and miracle – until very recently. Until just before now.