It is the role of student, and not public figure or even writer, in which Zadie Smith is most at ease. “I have a university fetish,” she admits, saying that she is happy to take classes and read books.

This semester she is taking English 253, “Austen, James, and the Novelist of Strategy” and English 298, “Literary Theory in the Life of Literature” and reading E.M. Forster for her upcoming collection of essays on the ethics of the novel.

“I’m reading against the clock now,” she says, but you can hear the amusement in her voice. “I have a gun to my head.”

In fact, she says she would much rather be a reader than a writer—she is more interested in what I’m taking this semester than in talking about her writing.

“I write when I really want to write,” she explains, but “it’s essential to read what you don’t want to read.” She writes because she’s “okay at it,” in the same way an athlete keeps running the 400 meters not out of any sheer joy in the endeavor but because he can do it well.

Smith’s fellowship at Radcliffe will last until June.

And she says her Harvard classes have afforded her a stimulating contrast to her tutorial experience at Cambridge.

Between school and her own work, she still finds moments to marvel at a singular New England community, which has not always met expectations.

“My idea of Harvard came from bad ’80s films,” she says. “Some jocks, some cheerleaders, more beer-drinking in the Yard.”

And that’s not the least of Harvard’s peculiarities, according to Smith.

“Everybody’s exercising a great deal. In my university, nobody exercised. We just drank.”