NW cover art

NW

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

NW

By: Zadie Smith
Narrated by: Don Gilet, Karen Bryson
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

From the MAN BOOKER PRIZE- and WOMEN'S PRIZE-SHORTLISTED author of Swing Time, White Teeth and On Beauty - a masterful and intimate novel of modern London life

'A triumph. Every sentence sings' Guardian

'Intensely funny, richly varied, always unexpected. A joyous, optimistic, angry masterpiece' Daily Telegraph

'Smith's most satisfying novel. Funny, sexy, weird, full of acute social comedy. She's up there with the best around' Evening Standard

Zadie Smith's brilliant tragicomic NW follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan - after they've left their childhood council estate, grown up and moved on to different lives. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their city is brutal, beautiful and complicated. Yet after a chance encounter they each find that the choices they've made, the people they once were and are now, can suddenly, rapidly unravel. Funny, poignant and vividly contemporary, NW is as brimming with vitality as the city itself.

 City Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Urban

Listeners also enjoyed...

 My Struggle, Book 1 cover art
Invisible Man cover art
My Brilliant Friend cover art
The Long Gaze Back cover art
War and Peace cover art
The Sound and the Fury cover art

Critic reviews

Praise for On Beauty:
Smith is an author of sublime gifts
Wittily inventive . . . Smith is the most naturally gifted young novelist around - with a fastidious ear for differentiated dialogue and a lethally quiet comic touch. Above all, she can move us (Craig Raine)
Delightfully entertaining . . . Filled with humour, generosity and contemporary sparkle
Praise for The Autograph Man:
Wonderfully funny. A pleasure from the first page to the last
Intellectually agile . . . Ecstatic inventiveness
Praise for White Teeth:
The outstanding debut of the new millenium
Quirky, sassy and wise . . . An instinctive storytelling talent
All stars
Most relevant

If you could sum up NW in three words, what would they be?

London, gritty, urban

Who was your favorite character and why?

Natalie was the most complex and well developed character.

What about Karen Bryson and Don Gilet ’s performance did you like?

They were both excellent at giving voice to the characters. It is a book about London and they perfected the accents.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Both

Any additional comments?

Like White Teeth, this book could be seen as a portrait of London as much as anything. The ending is a bit of a letdown but it is still a great book, try it.

Talented narrators bring the story to life

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The characters are vivid as is NW . A writer who makes a walk down the shops sing with life. Zadie Smith can do most things apart from being boring. Her london teams and some working class people can prosper but other stay stuck in poverty thick as glue.

Zadie Explores her neighbourhood

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
the characters and settings really bought north west London to live. a tale of identity and friendship. a very enjoyable listen

a slice of authentic north London.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Enjoyed it . Do watch the ITV rendition of the book this is also very good

Very good

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I love her work, but this is my least favourite. She does give a terrific portrait of life in a marginal London community - scarcely a community actually - that is psychologically and sociologically satisfying. Yet the plotting is poor and confusing. Questions remain unresolved at the end. She's tried to be too clever and oblique when her straight story-telling is peerless at its best.

Not quite her best

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews