London ? She is an internationally acclaimed writer, but no one stares as the lean young woman, head swathed in a turban of striking, sand-colored cotton, strides on long legs through the streets of north London on a brisk, sun-filled day.

That’s just fine with Zadie Smith, whose new book, “On Beauty,” is climbing best-seller lists and is among the last six books competing for Britain’s prestigious Man Booker Prize this year.

Still just shy of 30 – her birthday is Oct. 25 – Smith is at home in Queen’s Park’s vibrant tangle of streets dotted with outdoor cafes and grocery shops that spill papayas and artichokes onto the sidewalk; she grew up here, and this urban stew informs, inspires, even inhabits, her writing.

Flopping into a squashy leather sofa in a trendy wine bar, a burger and glass of red wine in front of her, Smith confides that fame sometimes makes her uneasy.

“Writing is not like being a pop star because many people don’t really read,” she says. “It’s excruciating to be looked at. It’s an empty feeling, like something has gone before you and is taking your place.”

But Smith, who was just 24 when her smash-hit comic novel, “White Teeth,” was published, is nothing at all like the prickly, uncommunicative creature described by some in the media.

British author Zadie Smith relaxes with her new book, On

Although she doesn’t regard herself as an easy interview – “I’m no good at it” – she is open, funny, engaging and relaxed during a two-hour conversation that canters from her recent meeting with her hero, John Updike – “for me, it was like meeting Shakespeare” – to cooking dinner for author Julian Barnes, to her desire for a dog and the need to find a new home for her elderly father.

The product of a Jamaican mother and a British father, she has the languid grace of someone who spent years honing her dancing. Her answers are direct and delivered with a sense of self-deprecation commendable in someone with such a high-octane mind. But Smith insists she is no intellectual. “Writing is not like being a physicist; it’s about emotions, it’s intuitive. I know nothing, but I’m interested in everything.”

Write what you know

An astute observer with a keen ear for dialogue and accent, she follows the authorly maxim to “write about what you know.”

While “White Teeth” – a vibrant work about two families’ assimilation in Britain – was based in multicultural north London, “On Beauty” is set in the fictional New England town of Wellington, which doubles as Boston. Smith recently taught at Harvard University.

“On Beauty” is her most mature and wide-ranging novel to date, and it has been welcomed as a return to form after “Autograph Man,” a rangy, less-coherent work about an autograph collector who forges his idol’s signature.

In the acknowledgments, Smith states that the book is an homage to “Howards End,” E.M. Forster’s great Edwardian novel about the clash of two great families. In Smith’s novel, the liberal, postmodern, mixed-race Belseys and the Kippses, a clan of religious black conservatives, stand in for Forster’s white Schlegel and Wilcox families; Forster’s opening line, “One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister” is retooled as “One may as well begin with Jerome’s e-mails to his father.”

Where in “Howards End” Mrs. Wilcox wills a country house to Mrs. Schlegel, the gift that passes between families in “On Beauty” is a Haitian painting. Forster’s beautifully described Beethoven concert becomes a performance of Mozart’s Requiem on Boston Common; where Forster detects elephants and goblins in the notes, Smith finds monkeys and mermaids.

‘A fresh voice’

For John Sutherland, an English professor at University College London and chairman of the Man Booker judges, “On Beauty” has confirmed Smith “as a leader of a new generation of British fiction writers.”

“She is a fresh voice. She is always trying to genuflect to the tradition of the English novel, but she is also genuinely original, particularly in her description of the cultural mix,” he said. “With ‘On Beauty,’ she is in the tradition of English fiction, but what she has written is an American novel.

“It is hard to think of another writer between 20 and 30 who is as accomplished as she is.”

The Man Booker winner will be announced Monday.