At the moment, she is still living with her Jamaican mother in Willesden, where she grew up, and where her novel is largely set. 'Actually, I got a Third in my Part Ones,' she says, grinning.
She is quick to correct a recent newspaper assertion that she left Cambridge with a double First. She is modest, almost dismissive, about the book she has written, as if she genuinely didn't realise how good it really is, and insists that she finds it 'excruciating' to read. Despite all this, she is remarkably unassuming, quietly articulate though slightly shy about being interviewed, rolling cigarettes with nervous fingers and holding them, unsmoked, like a prop. Next month, she begins a stint as writer in residence at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London. As well as wide spread publicity for the book, which has already been sold in 8 countries, she was asked to write a short story for the New Yorker's millennial fiction issue, and in April is travelling to New York to take part in a literary festival organised by the magazine and to promote the American publication of White Teeth. Smith, still only 24, is currently enjoying the kind of success that most novelists can barely dream of. Next year it will happen to someone else.' These things happen sometimes, these freak events in publishing. But in the end, you just have to forget about it otherwise you'd never write a word. It did make my life a bit ridiculous really - it made me scared that I wasn't going to be able to finish the book, or that it wasn't going to be any good. And I had moments of fear, of not being able to write anything.' Because of the advance? She laughs diffidently she has already refused to confirm the sum involved, but admits that it was big.
'I didn't think the book would take two years to write,' she says, 'but I was quite lazy. She confesses that she has found the whole publicity whirl quite daunting.
Smith takes me to a caff in Willesden, north-west London, not unlike the one in which her two main characters, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, spend much of their time philosophising.
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