The extraordinary first historical novel from bestselling author of White Teeth Zadie Smith
It is 1873. Mrs Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper - and cousin by marriage - of a once famous novelist,now in decline,William Ainsworth,with whom she has lived for thirty years.
Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature,justice,abolitionism,class,her cousin,his wives,this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend,Mr Charles Dickens,of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades,in which nothing is quite what it seems.
Andrew Bogle meanwhile grew 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. When Bogle finds himself in London,star witness in a celebrated case of imposture,he knows his future depends on telling the right story.
The'Tichborne Trial'captivates Mrs Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is Or is he a fraud Mrs Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception,deciding what is real proves a complicated task...
Based on real historical events,The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction,Jamaica and Britain,fraudulence and authenticity,and the mystery of'other people.'
Publisher: Penguin Books LtdISBN: 9780241336991Number of pages: 464Weight: 700 gDimensions: 236 x 152 x 42 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
No one understands humans better. As this novel shows,there is no better guide to people and their bottomlessness than Smith herself This was really delightful. 10/10. Zadie Smith is a genius A novel full of people,ideas,humour,feeling and something like moral truth - the stuff of life Searingly original (and) virtuosic...the book masterfully depicts post-emancipation Britain as it ruptures along faultlines of class and race Brilliant. A Dickensian delight 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
Zadie Smith
A highly acclaimed and strikingly influential novelist,British author Zadie Smith burst on to the literary scene with her sharp and funny debut White Teeth.
Visit the Zadie Smith author page
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