Zadie's new book hits the shelves

It is literary London's most eagerly awaited novel of the year and it's finally here. The gifted and beautiful Zadie Smith became an international literary sensation thanks to her wildly popular first novel White Teeth, which has sold more than a million copies in Britain alone.

After a two-year wait, her second book, The Autograph Man, is released at the end of the month. Although she received a reported £250,000 advance for her first two novels, Miss Smith can expect hundreds of thousands more in royalties from the new book, which follows an autograph hunter's quest for his ultimate signature.

Miss Smith, 26, has said it is also about fame: "There are two million people all over the world who collect or trade in autographs - they're fascinated by fame. I like people who are pathological about things. Fame has become a holy grail."

The novel is already widely tipped to shoot straight to the top of the book charts and her name will be everywhere even before the novel hits the shops thanks to Channel 4's imminent screening of a ? 3.5million adaptation of White Teeth. Such is the weight of expectation that the new novel has already been "long-listed" for this year's Booker Prize.

But Miss Smith refuses to believe all the hype. When White Teeth was praised by Martin Amis, she said: "As long as I think the book is fairly rubbish, then I know I can carry on writing better things."

She has said of The Autograph Man: "People can read the book, or not read the book and obviously I hope they do, but someone doesn't have to be the biggest best-seller ever to be good writer. That's not what it's about."

Now it is here, the question every critic is waiting to answer is whether it can achieve the heights of her first.