The chronicler of contemporary London acclaimed and bestselling author Zadie Smith returns with her first historical novel Kilburn 1873. The 'Tichborne Trial' has captivated the widowed Scottish housekeeper Mrs Eliza Touchet and all of England. Readers are at odds over whether the defendant is who he claims to be - or an imposter. Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature justice abolitionism class her novelist cousin and his wives this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects England of being a land of facades in which nothing is quite what it seems. Andrew Bogle meanwhile finds himself the star witness his future depending on telling the right story. Growing 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. Based on real historical events The Fraud is a dazzling novel about how in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception deciding what's true can prove a complicated task.
