"Somewhere between the Queen and the Speaking Clock": Passing in Zadie Smith’s NW

In Zadie Smith’s novel NW (2012), the two female protagonists engage in various acts of pretence and disguise related to race, class, and sexuality in the multicultural setting of twenty-first-century North West London. While scholars have previously analysed these acts from perspectives such as (in)authenticity, drag, and performativity, this chapter argues that conceptualizing Smith’s NW as a novel of passing makes it possible to draw connections between seemingly scattered narrative episodes, linguistic features, and even visual components of the novel. Relying on theoretical contributions by Homi K. Bhabha, Pamela Caughie, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, and Lipika Pelham, the chapter first shows how the two female characters, white Leah (who is of Irish descent) and black Keisha (who is of Jamaican descent and changes her name to Natalie), can be regarded as mirror images of each other through their acts of passing. Then, based on the analysis of stylistic (linguistic, visual, and narrative) devices, the chapter shows that the novel exposes passing as a strategy that not only is bound to fail, but that also leads to the individual’s isolation and, ultimately, emotional unravelling.