On Beauty is a 2005 novel by British author Zadie Smith, loosely based on Howards End by E. M. Forster.

The Belsey family consists of university professor Howard, a white Englishman and Rembrandt scholar; his African-American wife Kiki; and their children, Jerome, Zora, and Levi.

Howard's professional nemesis is Monty Kipps, a Trinidadian living in Britain with his wife Carlene and children Victoria and Michael.

The Belseys attend Carlene's funeral in London, where Howard has sex with Victoria, now his student and with whom he had an ongoing flirtation.

Struggling with his mixed-race identity, he befriends and works for a group of Haitian men who sell counterfeit merchandise on Boston streetcorners.

Levi views them as the "essence of blackness,"[5] while remaining self-conscious of being seen in public with members of the Haitian population of Wellington.

[7] The Bookseller compiled reviews from multiple publications using a rating scale: "Top form", "Flawed but worth a read", and "Disappointing".

The magazine's critical summary reads: "Smith took a small hit with Autograph Man (2002), but On Beauty invokes her brilliant debut, White Teeth (2000)".

Among the parallels are the opening sections (Howards End begins with letters from Helen to her sister, On Beauty with emails from Jerome to his father); the bequeathing of a valuable item to a member of the other family (the Wilcox house Howards End is left by Ruth Wilcox to Margaret Schlegel; Carlene leaves Kiki a painting); and, more broadly, the idea of two families with very different ideas and values gradually becoming linked.

This concern is evident from the start; the narrative is foregrounded with a quote from Humanists UK executive director Harold Blackham.

[16] The setting of much of the novel, the fictitious Wellington College and surrounding community, contains many close parallels to the real Harvard University and Cambridge, Massachusetts.