<DIV>This is the story of a city.<br><br> The northwest corner of a city. Here you’ll find guests and hosts, those with power and those without it, people who live somewhere special and others who live nowhere at all. And many people in between.<br><br> Every city is like this. Cheek-by-jowl living. Separate worlds.<br><br> And then there are the visitations: the rare times a stranger crosses a threshold without permission or warning, causing a disruption in the whole system. Like the April afternoon a woman came to Leah Hanwell’s door, seeking help, disturbing the peace, forcing Leah out of her isolation…<br><br> Zadie Smith’s brilliant tragi-comic new novel follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan – as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their London is a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end.<br><br> Depicting the modern urban zone – familiar to town-dwellers everywhere – Zadie Smith’s <i>NW</i> is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.<br><br></div>