لخّصلي

of ethnically, culturally and religiously diverse cha- racters - mainly, Anglo-Jamaican, Bangladeshi and Jewish - adjusting, negotiating and creating a sense of "Britishness" and a sense of belonging in the city of London at three different historical periods of time: the Second World War and post-war years, the period of social changes of the 1980s, and the late 1990s. Critical reviews on White Teeth did not cease to highlight the novel's multiethnic, multiracial and multicultural aspect (Russo 2000; Hanks 2002; Mason 2005). In this respect, the characters in White Teeth are the epitome of hybridity and cultural diversity. Their initial common feature is the shared-spatial locus of the city of London. The spatial dimension is, thus, central to the novel. The metropolis is the backdrop that channels social interaction and becomes the primary space of possibility; a place where a homogeneous and united view of "Britishness" is challenged and where contesting spatial representations materialise: "It is to the city that the migrants, the mino- rities, the diasporic come to change the history of the nation ... it is the city which provides the space in which emergent identifications and new social movements of the people are played out" (Bhabha 2004: 243).Hence, inter and intra family relations among ethnically-diverse characters are the central motif of the novel during the second period (the 1980s), and the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in religious and scientific group associations pertain social space in the last part of the novel (the 1990s).Accordingly, Smith's portrayal of the social configuration(s) of this multicultural space since the early 1940s to the late 1990s can be argued to develop around the networks of relations created with the encounters and dis-encounters of such a variety of characters.This newly acquired multicultural aspect of Britain is explored in the novel in the subsequent decades.

of ethnically, culturally and religiously diverse cha- racters – mainly, Anglo-Jamaican, Bangladeshi and Jewish – adjusting, negotiating and creating a sense of “Britishness” and a sense of belonging in the city of London at three different historical periods of time: the Second World War and post-war years, the period of social changes of the 1980s, and the late 1990s. Critical reviews on White Teeth did not cease to highlight the novel’s multiethnic, multiracial and multicultural aspect (Russo 2000; Hanks 2002; Mason 2005). In this respect, the characters in White Teeth are the epitome of hybridity and cultural diversity. Their initial common feature is the shared-spatial locus of the city of London. The spatial dimension is, thus, central to the novel. The metropolis is the backdrop that channels social interaction and becomes the primary space of possibility; a place where a homogeneous and united view of “Britishness” is challenged and where contesting spatial representations materialise: “It is to the city that the migrants, the mino- rities, the diasporic come to change the history of the nation ... it is the city which provides the space in which emergent identifications and new social movements of the people are played out” (Bhabha 2004: 243).
The sense of space that White Teeth confers is very close to geographer Doreen Massey’s understanding of space as a set of social relations (Massey 1994, 2005). Accordingly, Smith’s portrayal of the social configuration(s) of this multicultural space since the early 1940s to the late 1990s can be argued to develop around the networks of relations created with the encounters and dis-encounters of such a variety of characters. The friendship established between Archibald Jones (British) and Samad Iqbal (Bangladeshi) characterises the novel’s narrative during the first period of time (the 1940s) and functions as a central axis around which the plot of the novel expands in the other two periods. Their relation is made possible by the disruption of the traditional social order brought about by the Second World War. The years of the aftermath of the Second World War, from 1945 to late 1950s, are considered to be the starting point of a new British society characterised by the presence of citizens of other different ethnicities – mainly those coming from ex-colonial territories – within, up until that moment, an almost completely white social environment (Solomos 1993).
This newly acquired multicultural aspect of Britain is explored in the novel in the subsequent decades. Hence, inter and intra family relations among ethnically-diverse characters are the central motif of the novel during the second period (the 1980s), and the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in religious and scientific group associations pertain social space in the last part of the novel (the 1990s). In this essay I shall pay close attention to the configurations of social space in the second period of time, the 1980s, a space pre- sented in the novel as evolving around family life. The conservative model of a traditional British family – white, middle-class, protestant –as the pillar of society is put into question in Smith’s narrative through the inclusion of other household representations that point towards an inherent multicultural aspect of British society. I shall also concentrate on the novel’s critical reception, for, undoubtedly, it has been considered as a landmark in the contemporary British literary panorama.
White Teeth was a huge literary success; what impressed critics the most was the youth of Zadie Smith and the quality of her work. Smith was still an undergraduate student when she was offered a contract by Hamish Hamilton to complete the novel based on the reading of scarcely the first chapter and she wrote the rest of it during her senior year at Cambridge University (Russo 2000: n.p.). The final book was “eagerly anticipated –and extravagantly publicized– this past winter [2000] in London” (O’ Rourke 2000: 165). The media described Zadie Smith as the new sensation of the millennium comparing her work to that of Salman Rushdie