The Fraud
Zadie Smith
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 façades, 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.
Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time. She has also written a novella, three essay collections, a collection of short stories, (Grand Union, also shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize) and The Wife of Willesden, a play adapted from Chaucer. She was born in north-west London, where she still lives. The Fraud is her first historical novel.
At what age did you know you wanted to become a writer?
It’s hard to remember. I thought of myself as a reader always: that was my identity. I know I got a typewriter for my 12th birthday, and I have the story I wrote on it. And I wrote half a novel when I was about fifteen. But I had no professional ambitions, as far as I remember.
What was your favourite childhood book?
I had three. Hurricane by Andrew Salkey, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis and The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl.
Which is your favourite book of recent years?
I don’t think I can answer that. I read a lot and love a lot of things. Right this second it’s probably Brian by Jeremy Cooper and Employees by Olga Ravn.
What three books would you take to your Desert Island?
I think a set of encylopaedias. The depth of my ignorance when it comes to the material sciences, geography, anthropology etc is so profound. It would be pure indulgence to take three novels and just keep reading them until I went crazy. At least this way I’d learn something.
What is your ‘if you don’t like this, you can’t be my friend’ book?
I don’t think that category exists for me. I don’t especially want or need friends to read what I read or read at all. But when it comes to writer friends, someone who doesn’t see the point of Shakespeare is someone I’d find hard to understand.
Who or what have been your most important influences?
I am influenced by everything that comes anywhere near me. I am an extremely porous person. But the early ones probably had the deepest impact. So I’d have to say my mother, my father, British television, Steven Spielberg, The Black Book by Toni Morrison, Stevie Wonder, Alice Walker, the Sugarhill Gang and the Old Testament.
Which of the other shortlisted titles are you most excited to read?
I’ll stick to my category and say Anne Enright. I’ve read The Bee Sting – I wrote Paul a fan letter about it. I love Anne and her novels. It will honestly be an honour to lose to either of them.
If you weren’t a writer, what would you be doing?
In my fantasies, performing on Broadway. In reality, teaching English in a local Secondary School.
