
Intimations
Six Essays
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Narrated by:
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Zadie Smith
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By:
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Zadie Smith
About this listen
“[Smith’s] slim collection of essays captures this peculiar moment with startling clarity.... The personal and political intermingle for a powerful indictment of America’s social systems.” (TIME, The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020)
“While quarantined amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Smith penned six dazzling, trenchant essays burrowing deep into our contemporary culture of disease and upheaval and reflecting on what was ‘once necessary’ that now ‘appears inessential.” (O, The Oprah Magazine, Best Books of 2020)
“Smith does more than illuminate what we're going through right now. She offers a model of how to think ourselves through a fraught historical moment without getting hysterical or sanctimonious, without losing our compassion or our appreciation for what's good in other people. She teaches us how to be better at being human.” (John Powers, Fresh Air)
Deeply personal and powerfully moving, a short and timely series of reflective essays by one of the most clear-sighted and essential writers of our time.
Written during the early months of lockdown, Intimations explores ideas and questions prompted by an unprecedented situation. What does it mean to submit to a new reality - or to resist it? How do we compare relative sufferings? What is the relationship between time and work? In our isolation, what do other people mean to us? How do we think about them? What is the ratio of contempt to compassion in a crisis? When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it?
Suffused with a profound intimacy and tenderness in response to these extraordinary times, Intimations is a slim, suggestive volume with a wide scope, in which Zadie Smith clears a generous space for thought, open enough for each listener to reflect on what has happened - and what should come next.
The author will donate her royalties from the sale of Intimations to charity.
©2020 Zadie Smith (P)2020 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Intimations captures the uneasiness of our modern moment as Smith reflects on the COVID-19 pandemic and relates it to issues of privilege and inequity. Her urgent voice tackles everything from what becomes important during isolation to the global response to George Floyd’s killing. The author asks questions, both timely and timeless, about how we respond to crisis and suffering." (Time, Best New Books of July)
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Somewhat Disappointed
- By Cherokee on 11-15-05
By: Zadie Smith
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Changing My Mind
- Occasional Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Split into five sections - Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians, and Italian divas. Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent, and funny - a gift to readers and writers both.
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There may be truths on the side of life
- By Darwin8u on 02-18-20
By: Zadie Smith
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Breathless
- The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus
- By: David Quammen
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Breathless is story of SARs-CoV-2 and its fierce journey through the human population, as seen by the scientists who study its origin, its ever-changing nature, and its capacity to kill us. David Quammen expertly shows how strange new viruses emerge from animals into humans as we disrupt wild ecosystems and how those viruses adapt to their human hosts, sometimes causing global catastrophe. He explains why this coronavirus will probably be a “forever virus,” destined to circulate among humans and bedevil us endlessly, in one variant form or another.
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Loved it!
- By Melissa on 03-10-23
By: David Quammen
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Beat the Devil
- By: David Hare, Donald Katz - Introduction
- Narrated by: David Hare
- Length: 1 hr and 10 mins
- Original Recording
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In the spring of 2020, as the world grappled with the deepening coronavirus pandemic, acclaimed British screenwriter and playwright David Hare was struck down by the virus himself. With brutal honesty, sharp humor, and his trademark insight, the renowned writer of modern classics like Skylight and Plenty brings us into his own experience battling the bizarre and terrifying symptoms of Covid-19.
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Almost Hilarious If Not Sad
- By Anonymous User on 10-30-24
By: David Hare, and others
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Swing Time
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Pippa Bennett-Warner
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: About rhythm and time, about Black bodies and Black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early 20s, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either. Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live.
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Enthralling and instructive. A novel of the highest caliber
- By Richmond Surrey on 07-27-17
By: Zadie Smith
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White Teeth
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Lenny Henry, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ray Panthaki, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them.
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4.68 stars....a modern classic
- By ibillinsly@gmail on 06-06-18
By: Zadie Smith
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World War C
- Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic and How to Prepare for the Next One
- By: Sanjay Gupta MD, Kristin Loberg - contributor
- Narrated by: Sanjay Gupta MD
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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As America’s favorite frontline Covid-19 health journalist, Dr. Sanjay Gupta has barely left his primetime seat in his makeshift studio basement since the pandemic began (other than to perform brain surgery). He’s had insider access to the drama’s unfolding, including exclusive conversations with the world’s top public health experts and behind-the-scenes scientists racing to find treatments and cures.
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Thank you Dr. Gupta!!
- By Amazon Customer on 10-06-21
By: Sanjay Gupta MD, and others
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The Last Showman
- Words + Music, Vol. 41
- By: Usher, Gerrick Kennedy
- Narrated by: Usher
- Length: 1 hr and 12 mins
- Original Recording
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For the past 30 years, Usher has exhilarated audiences with stadium-sized anthems, innovative choreography, and dazzling charm that has made him a once-in-a-generation superstar. The Last Showman is an introspective look into the past, present, and future of a beloved global R&B icon. Usher opens up about the inspirations, heartache, and growth that fueled the creation of his record-breaking magnum opus, Confessions, while revisiting some of its most iconic tracks.
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love you Ursher
- By Amazon Customer on 02-06-25
By: Usher, and others
What listeners say about Intimations
Highly rated for:
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- Maurice
- 08-08-20
awesome jewel
this was a wonderful listen. great stories with poignant subject matter. kept me engaged
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- Bimal
- 08-01-20
Lucid yet contemplative
The captivating prose brings out our own thoughts strewn nicely with a thread of uplifting art of reading. This is one such book which would be less stimulating without the magical renderence of the endearing voice of Zadie.
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- Rashida L
- 07-29-20
An eye-opener for me into our inequitable systems
Narrated by the author's own lovely voice, I listened to it completely in a day. The author offered an incredibly unique and insightful perspective into the issues exploding before us this very day. The issues of racism and inequality amplified many times over by the pandemic and how our country's structures have been incapable of dealing with it and in fact have exacerbated its impact and led to many unnecessary deaths. As an older white male these essays were eye-popping to me.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Claire
- 02-12-23
Listening to Zadie Smith
love that it was in the authors voice. I love that Smith acted out the dialogue.
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- BenYL
- 03-30-21
Read this book
Beautiful, clever, thought provoking, funny, convicting, tender. Less than 2 hours of time but I know I’ll be thinking about it for weeks.
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2 people found this helpful
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- IvyLDC
- 01-05-22
2020 seems like a lifetime ago
Smith is an incredibly smart, observant writer. I will likely need to relisten to really understand her points in this collection. That said, the initial lockdowns of 2020 seem like a strange collective experience of sacrifice very different from the 2021 that followed. Covid lockdown was for the common good and carried a common sorrow, but also it seemed like everyone was trying to be hopeful. I wrote a 50,000 word manuscript! In 2021 and this first week of 2022, we're grinding, exhausted, no longer tapping into the collective well of hope because the reserves are empty.
The P.S. essay on George Floyd was strong. needed, and did not suffer from the same rueful melancholy of the other essays. I found the last essay, Intimations, a bit confusing. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to recognize the names she was saying as influences on her life.
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- #EmptyNestReader
- 11-19-20
Smith puts into words what many of us feel
Zadie Smith is a talented essayist. In Intimations, her essays have a sense of urgency… right here… right now. To cope, Smith did what writers do, she wrote! Luckily for us as her talent puts into words so many of the things that I (and, I suspect, many others) have been feeling. "I felt like telling the truth, as unvarnished as I could manage it”. Smith is donating all royalties to charity.
On racism: Referring to the pandemic as “The Global Humbling” (which I love), Smith draws an analogy between it and racism. I truly believe that many people are unaware that they carry the virus at all until the very moment you find yourself phoning the cops to explain the race of the man you thought looked suspicious walking through his own neighborhood, or who spoke back to you in Central Park... To fear the contagion of poverty is reasonable. To keep voting for policies that ensure the permanent existence of an underclass is what is meant by “structural racism.”
On the virus: The supposed democratic nature of plague—the way in which it can strike all registered voters equally—turns out to be somewhat overstated. A plague it is, but American hierarchies, hundreds of years in the making, are not so easily overturned. Black and Latino people are now dying at twice the rate of white and Asian people. More poor people are dying than rich. More in urban centers than in the country.
On death: Death comes to all—but in America it has long been considered reasonable to offer the best chance of delay to the highest bidder.
On essential workers: People thank God for “essential” workers they once considered lowly, who not so long ago they despised for wanting 15 bucks an hour.
On change: “Change comes from the realization that what you’ve been told is “just the way things are” is, in fact, not nature but ideology.” I bought this ebook, then found it so meaningful that I wanted to hear it in Smith’s own voice so, I bought the audio book too! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
#emptynestreader #Intimations #ZadieSmith #emptynestreaderaudiobooks🎧
MORE QUOTES from Zadie Smith:
I used to think that there would one day be a vacine: that if enough black people named the virus, explained it, demonstrated how it operates, videoed its effects, protested it peacefully, revealed how widespread it really is, how the symptoms arise, how so many Americans keep giving it to each other, irresponsibly and shamefully, generation after generation, causing intolerable and unending damage both to individual bodies and to the body politic—I thought if that knowledge became as widespread as could possibly be managed or imagined that we might finally reach some kind of herd immunity. I don’t think that anymore.”
“... the truth is that not enough carriers of this virus have ever been willing to risk the potential loss of any aspect of their social capital to find out what kind of America might lie on the other side of segregation. They are very happy to "blackout" their social media for a day, to read all-black books, and "educate" themselves about black issues — as long as this education does not occur in the form of actual black children attending their actual schools.”
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1 person found this helpful
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- Rebecca Gill Clarke
- 08-30-20
Thoughtful and timely
I’ve been a Zadie fan since White Teeth and this latest title doesn’t disappoint. Listening in NY whilst the pandemic continues, a lot of the stories she mentioned feel very raw and relevant. Loved hearing the words in her own voice as well - her accents are on point!
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- Steven M. Critelli
- 11-04-20
Read it now!
Brilliant, exhilarating, candid, self-aware, warm, gently humorous, and ultimately devastating. Read it before anything else on your list.
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- tracy danziger
- 08-16-20
words to open your mind
I loved every minute of this. I think it stretched my mind, confirmed inner thoughts and gave joy to listening to an intelligent woman's observations.
I will need to find more from this writer.
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