Singer Dua Lipa gets novelist Zadie Smith to revisit White Teeth, the debut she never reread

Both women on the Royal Festival Hall stage found fame early. Zadie Smith was twenty-four when White Teeth made her one of the most celebrated debut novelists of her generation; Dua Lipa was twenty-one when “New Rules” turned her into a chart-topping star. That shared starting point ran through a sold-out afternoon at London’s Southbank Centre, where the singer, curating this year’s London Literature Festival with her Service95 Book Club, sat down to interview the novelist about the book that launched her.

The Southbank Centre billed it as a rare conversation about the novel, and it came with a small confession: Smith admitted she has still not reread White Teeth. Instead of revisiting the text line by line, the pair worked through its much-loved characters, weighing where they stand in the book’s late-seventies setting and how they might translate into today’s charged political climate. Underneath it all sat questions of legacy and of what it means to grow up in the spotlight.

Class was on the table too. Both artists were raised in dual-heritage households, and they traced a mutual fascination with juxtapositions back to that upbringing. They also talked craft, landing on a point that bridges pop and the novel: the importance of listening, whether the end product is a lyric or a page of prose.

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For anyone following Lipa’s parallel life as a reader, the pairing makes sense. She founded the Service95 Book Club as the literary heart of Service95, her cultural platform, choosing a monthly read from her own shelves and sitting down with its author. Margaret Atwood, Olga Tokarczuk and Ocean Vuong are among the writers she has interviewed, and The Telegraph has called her “one of Britain’s foremost literary tastemakers.” The book club’s podcast was named among The Guardian’s Best Podcasts of the Week and ranked as one of Spotify’s Best Video Podcasts of 2025.

Her curation also lands in a symbolic year. The festival, now in its 19th edition and the longest-running literature festival in the city, is part of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary celebrations. Self-Esteem curated it last year, and past headliners include Margaret Atwood, Malala Yousafzai, Tom Hanks and Ai Weiwei.

The Smith conversation took place on Saturday 24 October, and the rest of Lipa’s programme continues until the festival closes on Sunday 1 November. Still to come: the Translated Fiction Showcase on 28 October; Fierce Sounds with Kae Tempest, on rhythm, form and sound in writing, on 30 October; and, on 31 October, both Re-Writing Male Tenderness, an evening on masculinity and vulnerability in prose, and Censorship Live! with English PEN, where journalists, writers and activists address rising threats to free expression.

Plenty of pop stars run book clubs. Getting Zadie Smith to talk about the novel she won’t reopen, in front of a full house, is the kind of booking that shows Lipa has taken the job seriously.

Tags: Southbank Centre, Dua Lipa, Zadie Smith, literary festivals, London Literature Festival, Royal Festival Hall

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