About
The Fraud Synopsis
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 facades, 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.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780241336991 |
| Publication date: |
7th September 2023 |
| Author: |
Zadie Smith |
| Publisher: |
Hamish Hamilton Ltd an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
455 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Historical Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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Press Reviews
Zadie Smith Press Reviews
'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
'Mesmerising. A triumph of historical fiction' - Publishers Weekly
'Her most commanding novel to date. This spectacularly entertaining and resonant historical novel will have enormous appeal' - Booklist
'Extraordinary. Readers of Hilary Mantel will be enthralled' - Library Journal
Author
About Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975, and continues to live both there and in New York, where she teaches on the Creative Writing programme at NYU.
White Teeth was first published in 2000 and won the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the WH Smith Book Award for New Talent, the Frankfurt eBook Award for Best Fiction Work Originally Published in 2000 and both the Commonwealth Writers First Book Award and Overall Commonwealth Writers Prize.
Zadie Smith's other novels are The Autograph Man and On Beauty, which was shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2005 and won The Orange Prize for Fiction 2006. She is also author of a collection of essays, Changing my Mind, and the editor of a book of short stories, The Book of Other People.
Her most recent novel is NW.
More About Zadie Smith
