Zadie Smith presents latest book 'Dead and Alive' in Barcelona

Novelist Zadie Smith, born in London in 1975, visited Barcelona's CCCB Monday to present her latest book, "Dead and Alive," now published in Catalan by Jande Editorial and in Spanish by Salamandra. 

The author, known for novels including "White Teeth" and "The Fraud," returns to nonfiction with a collection of essays on art, culture, literature and current affairs that have caught her attention in recent years. 

Smith said the essays were written at different times and for different reasons. 

"I'm always trying to think about offering readers a different way of moving through an idea," she said. "They don't have to accept the idea itself, it's just an example of a different form of thinking."

"I have taken less photographs than any other human on earth since 2008," she said. "So I don't keep a record, I don't write diaries, I don't take pictures of my life … so maybe this is a form of recollecting."

Asked about artificial intelligence and new technology, Smith said she does not actively engage with them, though she acknowledged no one can be entirely immune to their influence. 

"I think it's embarrassing for all of us, particularly those on the left, that what we've actually done is give an unregulated, undemocratic, world-changing amount of power to some capitalist billionaires," she said. "That wasn't the narrative we gave ourselves, we gave ourselves a narrative that we had created a radically liberating technology."

Seeking and providing context

Figures such as Emily Dickinson, James Baldwin, Celia Paul, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison, among others, appear throughout the essays. Through them, Smith shares her perspective on subjects including social media, writing, the meaning of fiction and how it can be distorted. 

She also invites readers to join her on walks through her neighborhood, visits to museum galleries, and reflections on African art, as well as journeys that prompt a rethinking of childhood and adolescence.

Her main goal, however, is to invite readers to shift their focus, to seek out and provide context, to question how the contemporary world is shaped, and to treat reflection as an essential tool. 

Over her years of writing, Smith said, she has evolved as an author, largely due to the experience she has gained.

"I don't like comic characters, I prefer characters to seem more human," she said. "As you get older you realize that people are far more complicated than you think they are when you're 23."

She also said she has "exposed" herself to a wide range of literature, including Japanese, Korean, African, French and German. This, she says, has "broadened her influences significantly."

A major figure on the international stage

Smith, born to a Jamaican mother and an English father, is the award-winning, bestselling author of the novels "White Teeth," "The Autograph Man," "On Beauty," "NW," "Swing Time" and "The Fraud," as well as a short story collection and two volumes of essays. Her work has won her the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Orange Prize.

In 2003, she was named one of the Best of Young British Novelists by the prestigious magazine Granta, an honor she received again in 2013. In 2006, Time magazine included her on its list of the year's 100 most influential people. Smith is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.