The Autograph Man

by Zadie Smith (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $3.35

  This is the eagerly-awaited follow-up to the bestselling and prize-winning White Teeth , which established Zadie Smith as an outstanding new writer. Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. A small blip in a huge worldwide network of desire, it is his business to hunt for names on paper, collect them, sell them, occasionally fake them, and all to give the people what they want: a little piece of Fame. The Autograph Man is a deeply funny, existential tour around the hollow things of modernity - celebrity, cinema, and the ugly triumph of symbol over experience. Pushing against the tide of his generation, Alex-Li is on his way to finding enlightenment, otherwise known as some part of himself that cannot be signed, celebrated or sold.

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.35

  The Autograph Man is Zadie Smith's whirlwind tour of celebrity and our fame-obsessed times. Following one Alex-Li Tandem - a twenty-something, Chinese-Jewish autograph dealer turned on by sex, drugs and organised religion - it takes in London and New York, love and death, fathers and sons, as Alex tries to discover how a piece of paper can bring him closer to his heart's desire. Exposing our misconceptions about our idols - about ourselves - Zadie Smith delivers a brilliant, unforgettable tale about who we are and what we really want to be. A glorious concoction written by our most beguiling and original prose-wizard . (Independent on Sunday). A brilliant comedy with a tantalising throb of mystic philosophy underneath . (Philip Hensher, Books of the Year, Spectator). A pleasure from the first page to the last . (Evening Standard). Intellectually agile ...ecstatic inventiveness . (Time). A classic . (Spectator). Genuinely funny and entertaining . (Guardian). Vibrant, highly imaginative . (Jewish Chronicle). Full of irony, humour, the search for love and the fear of death ...a touching, thoughtful, deeply felt rite-of-passage novel . (Sunday Telegraph).

• New

  Paperback
  2003

  $12.11

  The Autograph Man is Zadie Smith's whirlwind tour of celebrity and our fame-obsessed times. Following one Alex-Li Tandem - a twenty-something, Chinese-Jewish autograph dealer turned on by sex, drugs and organised religion - it takes in London and New York, love and death, fathers and sons, as Alex tries to discover how a piece of paper can bring him closer to his heart's desire. Exposing our misconceptions about our idols - about ourselves - Zadie Smith delivers a brilliant, unforgettable tale about who we are and what we really want to be. A glorious concoction written by our most beguiling and original prose-wizard . (Independent on Sunday). A brilliant comedy with a tantalising throb of mystic philosophy underneath . (Philip Hensher, Books of the Year, Spectator). A pleasure from the first page to the last . (Evening Standard). Intellectually agile ...ecstatic inventiveness . (Time). A classic . (Spectator). Genuinely funny and entertaining . (Guardian). Vibrant, highly imaginative . (Jewish Chronicle). Full of irony, humour, the search for love and the fear of death ...a touching, thoughtful, deeply felt rite-of-passage novel . (Sunday Telegraph).