The Autograph Man

Q: Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?

No, you don’t have to buy the ebook to participate, but we do recommend it to get the most out of your club. There are several premium social reading features that are only available when you buy the ebook, like annotations, reactions, comment threads, resources, discussion prompts, and more, all embedded right in the text. It’s a unique and immersive way to read.

Q: Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?

It’s annoying, we know. App store rules prevent us from selling directly in the app, so for now you can only purchase ebooks on our website. Don’t worry: when you purchase an ebook on the web, it’s automatically added to your bookshelf in the app.

Q: How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?

Kindle is a straightforward e-reader; Fable is an interactive e-reader that includes social features inside the ebooks. When you read an ebook on Fable, you can see and react to the text with others in real time. Start a discussion, share highlights and quotes, add emoji reactions—all of it lives right inside the book. It’s hard to explain and easy to see, so we recommend reading the free sample in one of our most active clubs to get a feel for it.

Q: Do you sell physical books too?

We do not sell physical books at this time. Wish we did? Let us know why here!

Q: Are book clubs free to join on Fable?

Most of our clubs are completely free to join. The only exceptions are clubs marked as “Premium” or “Career Development,” which do require a fee. You can find out more on each club’s detail page.

Q: How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?

The first step is to download the Fable app. From there, you’ll be able to create your own private or public book club and invite others to read with you. Once your club is created, click on the plus sign under “Currently reading” and search for this book to add it to your club.

By Zadie Smith

Why read on Fable?

Discover social reading

Chat inside the ebook with emojis, comments and more

Annotate with notes, tabs, and highlights

Share or keep your notes private with our annotation features

Support the World Literacy Foundation

We donate 20% of every book sale to help children learn to read

Publisher Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of Swing Time and one of the most revered writers of her generation comes an "intelligent ... exquisitely clever [novel] about fame, mortality, and the triumph of image over reality” (The Boston Globe).

Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. His business is to hunt for names on paper, collect them, sell them, and occasionally fake them—all to give the people what they want: a little piece of Fame. But what does Alex want? Only the return of his father, the end of religion, something for his headache, three different girls, infinite grace, and the rare autograph of forties movie actress Kitty Alexander. With fries.

The Autograph Man is a deeply funny existential tour around the hollow trappings of modernity: celebrity, cinema, and the ugly triumph of symbol over experience. It offers further proof that Zadie Smith is one of the most staggeringly talented writers of her generation.

63 Reviews

3.0

Katie

Created about 1 month ago

georgiana

Created about 2 months ago

“Hated the protagonist despite his sob story- a bad past doesn’t mean you can behave like a knob imo. Not as enthralling as Zadie Smith’s other books for me, found some of the writing downright confusing at times.”

Queralt

Created 4 months ago

“I don’t really know how to review this one. This was my second attempt to read Zadie Smith and it was incredibly boring, yet there was something that kept me hooked. It got both better and worse as I keep reading and I’m not even sure what rating to give it, part of me wants to give it 2 stars and the other one wants to give it 4 stars, so I’m going for 3. The Autograph Man follows Alex-Li Tandem, a guy who collects and sells autographs, after a crazy night. While high, he’d ruined his relationship with Esther and he had somehow produced, out of nowhere, Kitty Alexander’s autograph. Everyone tells him it is forged, but is it? Why would he do that while high? And, to make matters worse, he’s got to perform Kaddish for his father’s death anniversary. Everything is a mess. That ‘something’ that kept me hooked for the first chunk was the narrator, mostly. I was 5 minutes into the audiobook and I kept wondering ‘why does the narrator sound like Ben Barnes?’ Well, because it is Ben Barnes (aka Prince Caspian). So I think the whole bit about hearing goody two-shoes Ben Barnes talk about manboobs and halitosis or making mooing sounds was sort of funny to me? I think I stuck to the first 30% because of that, but then I was kind of curious to know what would happen to Alex, if he’d fix things with Esther and find out what’s up with the stupid maybe-forged autograph. (I also really, really liked Kitty.) Content-wise, this book was quite heavy on the autograph world which was honestly really cool but also very meh. I think I had high expectations, but the cast of characters is honestly not interesting at all. I think Zadie Smith is really good at writing dialogue, but not at character-building? She assigns certain characteristics to the characters and runs with that, but I never seem to care for anyone, they don’t have much depth (IMO). The other focus was on Judaism which is something I don’t know much about so everything flew over my head, religion isn’t really my thing. But overall, what I was really into was the drama. Alex had messy relationships with everyone and honestly, it was all so chaotic lol My biggest ick with the book was how many times Zadie Smith would define something as the “international gesture of…” I loaned the ebook just to check this, she writes it 29 times. I don’t think I’ve seen it used this many times ever. Another thing that bothered me was Alex himself. I didn’t get him. He overreacted (in my opinion) to everything that happened with Kitty’s letters and he massively underreacted to what Esther has to go through (and let’s not talk about Honey because what the fudge Alex) (speaking of which, am I the only person who disliked Honey?). I just couldn’t quite make sense of him. I don’t think he’s unlikable, but he does things that I’d throw him out of the window for. Here’s the one quote I liked: “Look, you have your work, Joseph, yes? And Rubinfine has his family. And Adam has his God. And this is what I have. My little obsessions. You used to have them too, but you grew out of them. Lucky you. But I didn’t, all right? Do you understand? This is what is between me and my grave. This is what I have.””

Malin Vestergren

Created 10 months ago

Lilli Ferry Ellis

Created about 1 year ago

About Zadie Smith

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, three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free, and Intimations, and a short story collection, Grand Union. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Smith 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 Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.