Hello, I'm Kirstie Young.

Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the Radio Broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit bbc.co.uk-radio4.

My cast away this week is the writer Zady Smith.

First published at just 24, her debut novel White Teeth garnered huge attention and praise as a result.

She suffered the unnerving experience of doing her literary growing up in public yet.

In spite of the scrutiny, it would appear she blossomed.

In the 13 years since, more novels, essays and short stories have brought numerous literary prizes and critical praise.

Born to a Jamaican mother in a British father, she was brought up in Willstone, North London, where many of her characters live.

She began writing at five and became a voracious reader, devouring the greats of literature.

Now, she divides her time between Willstone and New York, where she teaches creative writing.

She describes herself as an English novelist enslaved to an ancient tradition,

and yet her chosen areas of exploration could not be more of the moment rooted in the esnojumble of contemporary Britain.

She says, I'm really interested in what memory feels like.

We only have snapshots of the past. Writing isn't about being experimental, it's about finding something true.

So, Zady Smith, exploring what memory feels like, that's a very interesting proposition.

What purpose do you think that serves?

For me, it's the idea of recognizing where you are in time.

I just find a lot of the way we live now is meant to disguise from you the reality of time.

And when I'm writing, I'm trying to remind myself before anybody else that it's real that this thing that you're in.

I just think it's a human instinct to deeply believe that you, Kirstie, for example, are going to die, but me, on the other hand, I'm going to last.

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