The Fraud

Zadie Smith

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English

HAMISH HAMILTON
12 September 2023

Fiction & Literature; Historical fiction

The chronicler of contemporary London, acclaimed and bestselling author 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.

By: Zadie Smith
Imprint: HAMISH HAMILTON
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 38mm
Weight: 560g
ISBN: 9780241337004
ISBN 10: 0241337003
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 12 September 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.

Reviews for The Fraud

This was really delightful. 10/10. Zadie Smith is a genius -- Brandon Taylor The Fraud is brilliantly funny and sharply observed . . . Zadie Smith paints the Victorian era in vivid colour, offering us a clear view of the simmering tensions that gave birth to a growing and universal cry for freedom, shaking the notion of the benevolent British Empire -- Paterson Joseph