The Fraud

Description

The chronicler of contemporary London, acclaimed and bestselling author Zadie Smith, returns with her first historical novel

Truth and fiction. Jamaica and Britain. Who gets to tell their story? Zadie Smith returns with her first historical novel.

Kilburn, 1873. The 'Tichborne Trial' has captivated the widowed Scottish housekeeper Mrs Eliza Touchet and all of England. Readers are at odds over whether the defendant is who he claims to be - or an imposter.

Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests- literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her novelist cousin and his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects England of being a land of fa ades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle meanwhile finds himself the star witness, his future depending on telling the right story. Growing up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica, he knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realise.

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about how in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what's true can prove a complicated task.

Reviews

No one understands humans better. As this novel shows, there is no better guide to people and their bottomlessness than Smith herself * iNews *
This was really delightful. 10/10. Zadie Smith is a genius -- Brandon Taylor author of The Late Americans
A novel full of people, ideas, humour, feeling and something like moral truth - the stuff of life * Evening Standard *
Searingly original [and] virtuosic . . . the book masterfully depicts post-emancipation Britain as it ruptures along faultlines of class and race * Vogue *
Brilliant. A Dickensian delight * Los Angeles Times *
The Fraud is unlike anything you'll read this year: a charismatic, cerebral novel that asks us to consider the greatest fraud of all, that of one man claiming to hold the key to another's freedom * Irish Times *
Affecting and devastating . . . In typical Zadie style, the narrative structure and decade leaping require you to pay attention - but you're heavily rewarded with the sheer breadth of the novel and its vividly painted characters * Independent, '24 best summer books 2024' *
A wonderful meditation on truth and falsehood, and the boundaries between fact and fiction * Spectator *
A rich and sprawling novel with a terrific cast of characters, this is Smith at her best * The i Paper, 'Best new paperbacks for summer' *
A big, rich saga, tumbling with characters and big issues (feminism, slavery, truth) * The Times, 'Best Novels of 2023' *
The Fraud is a complex mosaic of interweaving plots . . . The novel pulls off the trick of being both splendidly modern and authentically old and the characters are varied and entertaining * Independent, 'Best Books of 2023' *
Ambitious in both style and subject matter, and bursting with Smith's trademark sprightly dialogue, The Fraud is also very funny * Guardian, 'Summer reading' *

 

 

Author Biography: Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time; as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia; three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free and Intimations; a collection of short stories, Grand Union; and the play, The Wife of Willesden, adapted from Chaucer. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie Smith was born in north-west London, where she still lives. The Fraud is her first historical novel.