The Fraud: A Novel (Large Print)

Paperback

Main Details

Title The Fraud: A Novel (Large Print)
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Zadie Smith
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback
Pages:592
Dimensions(mm): Height 235,Width 156
Category/GenreLarge Print
Trade Publishers Large Print
All Dates
ISBN/Barcode 9780593792643
Audience
General
Edition Large Print Edition

Publishing Details

Publisher Trade Publishers Large Print
Imprint Random House Large Print
NZ Release Date 31 October 2023
Publication Country United States

Description

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-and who gets to be believed 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 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 Tichborne Trial-wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title-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.