The Fraud
The instant Sunday Times bestseller
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- €5.99
Publisher Description
Book of the Year 2023 according to New York Times, New Yorker, Guardian, Economist, Observer, The Spectator, Financial Times, Vogue, The Times, The Oldie, i Paper, The Standard, Washington Post, Independent, Daily Express
SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WRITERS’ PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024
ONE OF SARAH JESSICA PARKER’S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2024
‘A writer at the peak of her powers’ The Telegraph
Truth and fiction. Jamaica and Britain. Who gets to tell their story?
In her first historical novel, Zadie Smith transports the reader to a Victorian England transfixed by the real-life trial of the Tichborne Claimant, in which a cockney butcher, recently returned from Australia, lays claim to the Tichborne baronetcy, with his former slave Andrew Bogle as star witness. Watching the proceedings, and with her own story to tell, is Eliza Touchet – cousin, housekeeper and perhaps more – to failing novelist William Harrison Ainsworth.
From literary London to the Jamaica’s sugar-cane plantations, Zadie Smith weaves an enthralling story linking the rich and the poor, the free and the enslaved, and the comic and the tragic.
‘It’s difficult to give any idea of how extraordinary this book is. One of the great historical novels, certainly. But has any historical novel ever combined such brilliantly researched and detailed history with such intensely imagined fiction?' Michael Frayn
‘As always it is a pleasure to be in Zadie Smith’s mind . . . Dickens may be dead, but Smith, thankfully, is alive’ New York Times
‘Zadie Smith’s Victorian-set masterpiece holds a mirror up to Britain . . . The Fraud is the genuine article’ Independent
‘Smith’s dazzling historical novel combines deft writing and strenuous construction in a tale of literary London and the horrors of slavery’ Guardian
Instant Sunday Times bestseller, September 2023
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
At this stage in her venerated career, Zadie Smith’s name is practically a byword for excellence—a new novel from the award-winning bestseller all but guarantees an elevated reading experience. The unimpeachable quality of Smith’s writing takes a sharp turn from modern into the classic in The Fraud, her first historical work, based on a sensational trial that captured media and public attention in the 19th century. The “fraud” in question is a man who claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne, heir to the Tichborne baronetcy—who was presumed lost at sea, some 10 years before the events of the novel take place—and a former slave, Andrew Bogle, who corroborates the claims. Adopting an episodic format in keeping with the time period, the narrative focus shifts between Eliza Touchet, a widow and housekeeper in the fictionalised household of real-life novelist William Ainsworth, and the elderly Bogle’s account of his years in Jamaica. The political questions and conflicts that arise over the course of the tale may be hundreds of years old, but the modern-day parallels are so striking, Smith needs only to employ a light touch to draw out the comparisons. Her equally dextrous ability to conjure a detailed, evocative scene in just a few precise sentences is as transportive as ever, capturing not just the tangible, recognisable markers of society in the 1800s, but also the spirit of the era within the pages. Thoroughly absorbing and delightfully vivid, The Fraud can be counted as yet another Zadie Smith triumph.
