# Recitatif: A Story - Hardcover

by **Toni Morrison** (Author), **Zadie Smith** (Introduction by)

**_NEW YORK TIMES_ BEST SELLER** \- **A beautiful, arresting story about race and the relationships that shape us through life by the legendary Nobel Prize winner--for the first time in a beautifully produced stand-alone edition, with an introduction by Zadie Smith**

**"A puzzle of a story, then--a game.... When \[Morrison\] called _Recitatif_ an 'experiment' she meant it. The subject of the experiment is the reader." --Zadie Smith, award-winning, best-selling author of _White Teeth_**

In this 1983 short story--the only short story Morrison ever wrote--we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them.

Another work of genius by this masterly writer, _Recitatif_ keeps Twyla's and Roberta's races ambiguous throughout the story. Morrison herself described _Recitatif_, a story which will keep readers thinking and discussing for years to come, as "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial." We know that one is white and one is Black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage?

A remarkable look into what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, and how perceptions are made tangible by reality, _Recitatif_ is a gift to readers in these changing times.

### Author Biography

TONI MORRISON is the author of eleven novels and three essay collections. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.

**Zadie Smith** is the author of the novels _White Teeth_, _The Autograph Man_, _On Beauty_, _NW_ and _Swing Time_, as well as a novella, _The Embassy of Cambodia_, and two collections of essays, _Changing My Mind_ and _Feel Free_. She is also the editor of _The Book of Other People_. Zadie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002, and was listed as one of Granta's 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003 and again in 2013. _White Teeth_ won multiple literary awards including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award. _On Beauty_ was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and _NW_ was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Zadie Smith is currently a tenured professor of fiction at New York University and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

**Number of Pages:** 96

**Dimensions:** 0.6 x 7 x 5.1 IN

**Publication Date:** February 01, 2022

## Details

- **Price:** 16.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 16.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Recitatif: A Story - Hardcover

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