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Four things characterise Zadie Smith’s work: multigenerational families used as a lens onto a whole historical moment, London — specifically North London — as a setting that shapes identity as much as any character does, a formal restlessness that changes structure from book to book rather than repeating a formula, and an essayist’s instinct for social observation that runs underneath even her most comic scenes. The seven writers below are my own picks, ordered from the closest match to the most distant, and each one connects to at least one of those four traits specifically. Rushdie and Lahiri share her interest in inherited culture versus the country someone is actually raised in; McEwan and Eugenides share her structural ambition; Franzen shares her instinct for turning one family into social criticism; Ishiguro shares her question of how much identity is chosen rather than given; Evaristo shares her literal setting and fragmented, multi-voiced form. Each entry below explains exactly which of these connections earns the writer their place on the list.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 authors, ranked by similarity · Literary Fiction · Books by Zadie Smith · Books Like White Teeth · Best Literary Fiction · Updated July 2026
Closest matchStart here
Salman Rushdie
Start with: Midnight’s Children (1981)
Rushdie’s novel of a boy born at the exact moment of Indian independence, whose life becomes magically entangled with his nation’s, is the book most directly named as an influence on White Teeth. Both novels use a large historical event as the hinge for a multigenerational, multi-voiced family story.
The most direct lineage on this list. Smith has repeatedly cited Rushdie as a formative influence, and White Teeth’s comic, maximalist, postcolonial London is written in a tradition he established first.
Formal precision
Ian McEwan
Start with: Atonement (2001)
McEwan shares little of Smith’s cultural terrain but the same commitment to structural control — Atonement builds toward a formal reveal about the unreliability of its own narration, not unlike NW’s fractured point of view. Both are contemporaries at the centre of the British literary establishment, and readers of one are consistently drawn to the other.
If NW was the Smith novel that impressed you most as a piece of construction rather than a story, McEwan is the writer to read next — same obsession with what narrative form can do to a reader’s trust.
Restraint & identity
Kazuo Ishiguro
Start with: The Remains of the Day (1989)
Ishiguro’s Nobel-winning novel about a butler’s suppressed feelings and misplaced loyalty shares Smith’s interest in how identity is shaped by inherited roles, though his prose is far more restrained than her maximalist early style.
Read this if what draws you to Smith is the question underneath all her books — how much of who we are is chosen versus inherited — rather than her comic voice specifically.
State-of-the-nation
Jonathan Franzen
Start with: The Corrections (2001)
Franzen’s sprawling family novel dissects an American Midwestern family with the same essayistic, socially observant eye Smith brings to North London — both writers use one family as a lens onto an entire national moment.
The American counterpart to Smith’s project: ambitious, satirical, multi-perspective novels that double as social criticism. Readers of Feel Free will recognise the same critical instinct here, just aimed at the American family instead of British multiculturalism.
Diaspora & family
Jhumpa Lahiri
Start with: The Namesake (2003)
Lahiri’s novel follows a Bengali-American family across two generations as their American-born son navigates a name, and an identity, caught between cultures — the same first-generation-versus-second-generation tension that runs through White Teeth’s Iqbal sons.
Read this for the immigrant-family dynamic specifically: quieter and more melancholic than Smith’s comic register, but working the same fault line between inherited culture and the country a child is actually raised in.
Multigenerational saga
Jeffrey Eugenides
Start with: Middlesex (2002)
Eugenides’s Pulitzer-winning novel follows a Greek-American family across three generations and a rare genetic condition, built with the same architectural ambition as White Teeth’s century-spanning family plotting.
The closest match on this list for scale and structure if the generational sweep of White Teeth, rather than its London setting specifically, is what you responded to.
Contemporary British peer
Bernardine Evaristo
Start with: Girl, Woman, Other (2019)
Evaristo’s Booker Prize-winning novel follows twelve characters, mostly Black British women, across a century, told in a fragmented, punctuation-light style that owes something to the same structural restlessness Smith brings to NW.
A step further from Smith than the names above in terms of direct lineage, but the closest living contemporary in subject matter: both write fragmented, multi-voiced novels centring Black British life across generations in London.
Where to start on this list
If you loved White Teeth most
→ Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, the novel Smith has cited as a direct influence, or Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake for the same immigrant-family fault line.
If you loved NW most
→ Ian McEwan’s Atonement or Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, for the same structural experimentation.
If you loved On Beauty most
→ Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, for the same interest in identity shaped by inherited roles.
If you want the multigenerational sweep of White Teeth, in a different setting
→ Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex or Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections.
Looking for the books themselves
→ See my full Zadie Smith bibliography and my best literary fiction list for more in this vein.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Zadie Smith
More from the shelf
Author guide
Books Written by Zadie Smith
The full bibliography, in reading order.
Reading list
Books Like White Teeth
Multigenerational, multicultural, and just as sharp.
Reading list
Best Literary Fiction
The novels I keep coming back to.
On my shelf
My Bookshelf — Book Recommendations
Every book I have personally reviewed, in one place.
