Magid and Millat are the children of Alsana and Samad Iqbal in this novel, which opens as "a bloke in the joke" attempts suicide in a car after recalling how he met his future wife Clara Bowden.
One character in this novel is told to "stop the slavish devotion" and to "get a girl, get a guy, but get a life" before being kissed by Maxine. That character gets her hair straightened to look attractive to a would-be assassin who shows up at the unveiling of FutureMouse after having joined an organization whose acronym is KEVIN. This novel also includes the "Chalfenism" practiced by a namesake third-generation family of German and Polish Jews as well as flashbacks to the "Buggered Battalion," where one soldier remembers his Sepoy ancestor Mangal Pandey. Magid and Millat are the children of Alsana and Samad Iqbal in this novel, which opens as "a bloke in the joke" attempts suicide in a car after recalling how he met his future wife Clara Bowden. Chronicling the life of Bangladeshi and Jamaican immigrants in London, for 10 points, identify this debut novel of Zadie Smith.
One character in this novel is told to "stop the slavish devotion" and to "get a girl, get a guy, but get a life" before being kissed by Maxine.
{White Teeth}