The Fraud

The chronicler of contemporary London, acclaimed and bestselling author Zadie Smith, returns with her first historical novel.

The Fraud explores the themes of truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, and 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 this trial, a cockney butcher, recently returned from Australia, lays claim to the Tichborne baronetcy, with his former slave Andrew Bogle as the star witness. Watching the proceedings, with her own story to tell, is Eliza Touchet—cousin, housekeeper, and perhaps more—to failing novelist William Harrison Ainsworth.

From literary London to 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.