Zadie Smith is only 37-years-old, but she's already a literary mega-star with the blueprints to a great novel etched into her very being (no exaggeration: this woman is basically a living, breathing manual on how to be a writer). Like her fellow British novelist Iris Murdoch, Smith is obsessed with moral philosophy, which has informed both her fiction and essays. But unlike Murdoch, Smith has a weird ability to make her complex ideas read like fluff, which has helped her bridge the chasm between commercial and academic audiences. She's also a master of word play; our favorite example is this gorgeous line: "The past is always tense; the future perfect."
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