The Fraud by Zadie Smith

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 Jamaicas 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.

Praise for The Fraud

Its 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?’ MICHEAL FRAYN

As always it is a pleasure to be in Zadie Smiths mind Dickens may be dead, but Smith, thankfully, is alive NEW YORK TIMES

Zadie Smiths Victorian-set masterpiece holds a mirror up to Britain . .. The Fraud is the genuine article INDEPENDENT

Smiths dazzling historical novel combines deft writing and strenuous construction in a tale of literary London and the horrors of slavery GUARDIAN