Smile

?You can call me Sma?l I insisted, drawing the word out, leaving a good gap between the a and the i with its two dots: Smy-eel. It had been a while since I?d pronounced my name the Arab way... I usually cheat a bit, and pronounce it the stylish English way, aspirating like the English do, all posh, and smiling: Smile... I can only get so far by being crafty, rubbing out those two dots on the i and touching up my photo, I can get given an interview but sooner or later I?ve got to show up in the flesh... An A-rab, in other words? Inspired by his love for literature, the narrator experiences life through the characters of his favourite writers, Shakespeare, Conrad and Melville. A literary sensation when first published in France, Smile chronicles everyday racism as experienced by a young Arab man in Paris today. Smile is a bitter, poignant book that, like all great writing, stays in the mind long after you have finished reading it.