In childhood, that impossibility took the form of being biracial in a binary culture of black and white, but whatever its cause, she notes, it can lead to “anger, sadness, despair, confusion”.

“For what is impossible about any real-life identity is its narrowness,” Smith writes.

She elaborates on the issue in The I Who Is Not Me, a lecture exploring the use of autobiographical material in fiction, by considering the fact that it took her until her last novel, Swing Time, to break her self-imposed taboo on using the first person. The question of voice – where you find one, where other people find theirs, whose gets listened to first and, perhaps most important, how you know when you can trust your own and when it is beguiling or deceiving you – is central to Smith’s novels. There is a simpler way of putting it: here is Smith, coolly appraising, connoisseurial, discerning and here she is, too, the book nerd, the culture geek, reading, hearing and seeing, occasionally dizzied by her own place among all these works of art, and dying to talk to somebody about it. The generosity takes the form of a permanent, embracing invitation to the reader – even when she is writing about, for example, Arthur Schopenhauer – and the perception is impressive because it operates not only outwards but also inwards, taking in the writer herself. T hese essays and journalistic pieces, which date from 2010 to last year and cover a range of subjects from Brexit to Justin Bieber to Italian gardens and her childhood bathroom, confirm Zadie Smith as a non-fiction writer of striking generosity and perception.

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