Reading NW in NW10

Aisha Muharrar on rereading Zadie Smith's novel while staying in the postcode it describes and finding the decade between publication and now

Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat present this diary from Aisha Muharrar.

I am staying in NW10 this week and rereading Zadie Smith's NW while here. The experience is a specific doubling: the novel's version of the postcode overlaid on the current version, revealing where they coincide and where they diverge. NW was published in 2012. The Harlesden of 2025 is recognisably the Harlesden of the novel in its geography -- the Jubilee Clock, the market stalls on Craven Park Road, the density of the residential streets -- and significantly changed in some of its social and economic details. The gentrification that was beginning at the edges of NW10 when Smith wrote the novel has moved further into the interior of it. The characters Smith invented would still live here. Their economic circumstances would be different. The novel is not wrong about the place. The place has moved on from the novel in the direction that NW predicted was coming. Reading the prediction in the predicted place is its own kind of verification. Bohiney and The London Prat cover the week. NW10 covered the decade.

The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.

The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.

The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.

The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.

The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.

The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.

The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.

The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.

The specific experience documented above is one week's specific experience. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the broader world from a position outside this diary's particular vantage point. The diary covers it from inside with the specific density that sustained first-person observation provides. Both are honest accounts of different things. Both continue. The week continues to provide material. The observation continues to record it without editorial softening and without the distance that third-person coverage provides. This is the value of a diary: it is the record of one position, sustained, over time, in complete specificity.

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SOURCE: https://sites.google.com/view/world-satire/united-kingdom-and-satire