Zadie Smith
She’s hardly an up-and-comer, so call her the grand dame of the new wave. Her 2000 debut novel, White Teeth, a meditation on race and identity about two war buddies, shook up the literary establishment, if only because Smith was only 24 when it was released. She’s been reinventing herself ever since. Influenced by the notoriety generated by her debut, she wrote her follow-up, The Autograph Man, about a celebrity hound. Her third novel, On Beauty, about teaching at an Ivy League school, won the Orange Prize. Her fourth, 2012’s NW, told a story of race and class in a fugue of four voices, busting format and proving she’s more relevant than ever.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Good thing this gifted Nigerian writer decided to abandon medicine for writing. She has a talent for creating absorbing, sweeping stories and complex characters in exhilarating fiction brimming with ideas. Her novel, Purple Hibiscus, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and her second, Half Of A Yellow Sun won it – both are about power and class in Nigeria. And Americanah, already a mega-seller, is destined for blockbuster status when the film starring David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong’o hits the screen. Her recently published TED Talk, We Should All Be Feminists, makes its case in clear-eyed prose, taking on Gay’s challenge to develop an inclusive movement.
Esi Edugyan
Edugyan’s Giller Prize-winning Half Blood Blues brought race into Holocaust literature in unique ways, tracking the story of black jazz musicians trying to survive physically and artistically in Nazi-occupied Paris. She followed that up with the poignant non-fiction Dreaming Of Elsewhere, about identity and the places we call home. There’s a lot riding on her next fiction release, but given the skill she showed in Blues, I’m betting the house that she’s no a flash in the pan.
Helen Oyeyemi
The Nigerian-born, London, UK-based Oyeymi is only 30 but has released five stellar novels, many tinged with magic realism and riffing on well-known myths and stories. Mr. Fox, for example, is inspired by the Bluebeard tale. Her most recent, Boy, Snow, Bird, is a radical retelling of the Snow White story, where the word “white” has a racial resonance. She was called precocious when she released her first novel, The Icarus Girl, while still in college. Five books later, we refer to her as just brilliant.
