The Fraud (Authentic Verified) by Zadie Smith

"From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story?nd who gets to be believed

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper?nd cousin by marriage?f 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 realize. 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 ?ichborne Trial?wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title?aptivates 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 ?ther people.?
PRAISE FOR THE AUDIOBOOK

?ith the virtuosic agility of an actor in a one-woman play, Smith as narrator so fully embodies each of her many distinct characters that she exposes, sometimes without their even knowing, the ways in which every one of us misrepresents ourselves in one way or another. This is a 19th-century novel of manners in which various people have very bad ones, and the result, thanks to the author? perfect ear for comic timing, is vigorously, insistently funny?mith bounces nimbly across the vernacular empire while leaving no mistake about her ubiquitous irony, her vocal side eye.?Lauren Christensen, The New York Times Book Review

?mith expertly performs her historical novel inspired by true events?mith? performance possesses considerable emotional depth, and she delivers lines with her characteristic searing wit. Smith? ear for accents turns into perfectly performed dialogue for characters from every corner of London.?The Millions"