The Fraud

By: Zadie Smith

Narrated by: Zadie Smith

Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

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'.

©2023 Zadie Smith (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic 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)

this would have been better as a short nonfiction essay

smith misses the mark here, sadly. there is no value added, no nuance, no argument that develops depth and breathes better for being stretched into this long work of fiction. what's more, it is difficult to follow. Smith would have been better off putting her thoughts (on slavery, oppression, the search for justice within systems of injustice, colonialism and the difficulty and importance of writing) into a brief little essay. they would not take up too many pages, so she could append them with a historical summary of the trial she tried to add colour to via this book.