'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith Trivia Quiz

Answer: In a motorcycle accident

Clara's white boyfriend Ryan is a mod, and detested by the other girls at her school. He befriends Clara's mother Hortense, a strict Jehovah's Witness, after she invites him in and gives him Jamaican food. Ryan asks Clara to get on his motorbike and tries to convince her to change her ways and become more religious, but Clara refuses, insisting she'd rather be a goat than a sheep.

While they are arguing, Ryan's motorbike crashes into a lamp post, and Clara's top teeth are knocked out.

Answer: Neena is a lesbian

Alsana repeatedly refers to Neena as 'Niece of Shame' throughout the book, as she strongly disapproves of Neena being a lesbian. Neena is used to it and mostly ignores her. She works in a shoe shop, fixing people's shoes. She also warns Irie off Millat when Irie gets hair extensions put in in the hope of attracting him, saying that Millat will only see her as a friend.

Later in the book, Alsana and Clara ask Neena and Maxine, her white girlfriend, to go to dinner with the Chalfens to find out more about them, as both of them disapprove of Millat and Irie spending so much time there. Neena is disgusted when Joyce asks her if she and Maxine use each other's breasts for pillows, and reports back that the Chalfens are 'crazy, nutso, raisins short of a fruitcake, rubber walls, screaming mad basket cases'.

Answer: Mangal Pandey

Although the characters in the book are fictional, Mangal Pandey was a real person, an Indian sepoy. He was involved in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and is considered a hero by many Indians. One key factor in Pandey's incitement of rebellion, cited in the book, was the discovery that the British had coated bullets in pig fat, which was an insult to Muslims as pigs are considered unclean in Islam, and beef fat, an insult to Hindus who saw cows as sacred animals. Bullets had to be bitten at one end before use, meaning that both Muslims and Hindus were put in an awkward position.

Samad repeatedly bores the other characters in the book by talking about his great-grandfather. He first mentions Pandey during the flashback to the Second World War, where he is part of a group of sappers stationed in Bulgaria along with Archie Jones, and is also the only Bengali in the group. He is bitter about the fact that his left hand is useless, due to a Sikh soldier accidentally shooting him there. Archie and Samad are the only survivors of an attack on their tank, when the tank breaks down and the two of them head to a nearby village to look for help. While they are away from the tank, one of the soldiers is shot, another is strangled and their leader commits suicide.

Abdul-Mickey, the owner of O'Connell's (a greasy spoon cafe Samad and Archie frequent), puts a portrait of Pandey on the wall at Samad's request. Archie and Samad also argue about Pandey's contribution to history; while Samad hero worships him, Archie makes a point of telling him that Pandey also gave rise to the slang word 'pandy', meaning 'coward'.

Answer: She refuses to give Samad straight answers to questions

Samad despairs that his children are becoming too assimilated into British culture and are not in touch with their roots. He cannot decide which child to send back to Bangladesh, and constantly flip-flops between Millat and Magid. The decision is partly fuelled by Samad's own guilt, as he is having an affair with a white woman, the boys' teacher. Eventually he decides to send Magid away, and Archie drives them and Millat (who has been woken up) to the airport. Samad lies that Magid is visiting his aunt.

Alsana is devastated when she finds out, especially when there is a cyclone happening in Bangladesh and she does not know if Magid is alive or dead (he survives, though his nose is broken by a falling vase). In revenge, she refuses to give Samad straight answers to questions, always answering, "Maybe, Samad Miah," because she wants him to feel the same uncertainty that she does.

The irony is that while growing up in Bangladesh, Magid becomes more westernised, becoming an atheist and developing a strong interest in science. Meanwhile, back in England, Millat gradually turns towards radical Islam, albeit while having sex with lots of white girls and smoking weed. Events in the brothers' lives parallel each other; Millat also breaks his nose, and at another point, he and Magid both have near-death experiences. Magid survives a tornado that destroys his house, while Millat has unprotected sex with a girl who is HIV positive.

Answer: The burning of 'The Satanic Verses'

Although the book does not explicitly mention Rushdie or 'The Satanic Verses' by name, it is clearly 'The Satanic Verses' to which Millat and his friends are referring, though none of them have actually read it (and neither has Samad, who also disapproves of the book).

They take the train up to Bradford for a book burning. Such burnings were taking place all over the world in 1989, when this part of 'White Teeth' is set, in protest against the contents of the book. Alsana and Samad are watching the news when an item about the protests against 'The Satanic Verses' comes on, and Alsana spots Millat in the crowd.

She is horrified to see her son burning a book, and punishes him by not only burning Millat's books, but his posters, CDs, guitar, film collection, and several items of clothing.

Answer: 'Sonnet 127' by William Shakespeare

Irie and Millat are studying 'Sonnet 127', and Irie asks the English teacher if the poem is about a black woman because of the lines about wiry hair. Both Irie and Millat are going through puberty, and while Millat is becoming increasingly handsome and is beloved by many girls - including Irie herself - Irie is self-conscious about her weight and wonky teeth. She gets told off by the teacher for drawing 'before' and 'after' pictures of her body in class. She later goes to a black hairdresser to try and have her hair straightened, as she thinks it might make Millat more attracted to her, but her hair ends up falling out and she has to wear a weave as a last resort. It doesn't have the desired effect.

This section also introduces Joshua Chalfen, whose middle-class intellectual family become a big part of both Irie and Millat's lives. Irie, Joshua and Millat are caught with a joint (which is Millat's) and suspended. The headmaster decides to punish them by organising two-hour study sessions at the Chalfens' house, focusing on biology and maths. Irie is drawn towards Marcus Chalfen, a geneticist, while Millat exploits Joyce Chalfen's motherly feelings towards him.

Answer: KEVIN

KEVIN stands for Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation. They admit they have an acronym problem. Over the course of the book, several other characters join KEVIN, including Shiva - a Hindu waiter who works at the same restaurant as Samad, and who converts to Islam - and Mo, the butcher who saves Archie's life at the beginning of the book. Mo joins as a result of finally having had enough of the continuous violence inflicted on him by white racists, and wants revenge. Millat becomes increasingly religious, dumping his white girlfriend because she dresses too provocatively and attracts male attention, but still has a major drug habit.

Answer: Animal rights

Marcus is working on a project called FutureMouse, which looks at eliminating cancer and uses a mouse as its subject, injecting carcinogens into its body. Irie is fascinated by the project and helps Marcus with admin, but discovers through reading his correspondence with Magid that he thinks little of her scientific capabilities. Joshua, however, becomes increasingly interested in animal rights, eventually joining a group called FATE (Fighting Animal Torture and Exploitation), a radical animal rights group who bear several similarities to the real-life Animal Liberation Front.

He gives up wearing leather and eating meat, goes to Glastonbury and gets a tattoo. He meets Joely and Crispin, the founders of FATE, while searching for a squat and joins them on the road.

The members of FATE are dubious about accepting him when they discover who his father is, but then figure he could be a valuable source of information.

Answer: He lied about killing 'Dr Sick'

Several groups plan to protest at the conference. Both KEVIN and Hortense's Jehovah's Witness group - which includes Ryan, Clara's ex-boyfriend - are planning to protest as they believe Marcus is playing god and interfering with the laws of the Creator, and FATE are protesting for animal rights reasons.

Earlier in the book, during the World War 2 flashback, Archie and Samad capture a French Nazi collaborator and scientist, nicknamed 'Dr Sick'. Samad orders Archie to kill him and leaves him to do the job. He hears a gunshot and thinks Archie killed Dr Sick, but in fact, Archie let him live after tossing a coin and getting tails (if he had got heads, he would have shot the doctor); it was actually Archie being shot in the leg that Samad heard.

Dr Sick later goes on to become Marcus' mentor, and appears at the conference. Archie and Samad recognise him by the fact that he cries tears of blood (a real-life condition known as haemolacria), and Samad starts swearing at Archie in Bengali. Meanwhile, Millat reaches for a gun and aims for Marcus, but Archie intercepts the bullet and is hit in the thigh.

Answer: The book never says

The ending of the book is ambiguous, and does not tell us whether Archie survived the shooting or who the father of Irie's baby is. Irie goes to the Iqbals' house to tell Millat that Alsana and Joyce have arranged a meeting between him and Magid, and the two end up having sex, only for Millat to immediately start praying. Irie immediately heads over to the Chalfens' house and has very angry sex with Magid. On New Year's Eve, Irie discovers she is eight weeks pregnant.

As Millat and Magid are identical, she does not know who the father of her baby is. One suggested endgame has her daughter writing postcards to 'Good Uncle Magid' and 'Bad Uncle Millat'.