The Fraud

Stumpel

Book of the Year 2023 according to New York Times, New Yorker, Guardian, Economist, Observer, The Spectator, Financial Times, Vogue, The Times, The Oldie, i Paper, The Standard, Washington Post, Independent, Daily ExpressSHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE WRITERS? PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024ONE OF SARAH JESSICA PARKER?S BEST BOOKS OF 2023LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2024?A writer at the peak of her powers? The TelegraphTruth and fiction. Jamaica and Britain. 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 which a cockney butcher, recently returned from Australia, lays claim to the Tichborne baronetcy, with his former slave Andrew Bogle as star witness. Watching the proceedings, and with her own story to tell, is Eliza Touchet ? cousin, housekeeper and perhaps more ? to failing novelist William Harrison Ainsworth.From literary London to the 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.?It?s difficult to give any idea of how extraordinary this book is. One of the great historical novels, certainly. But has any historical novel ever combined such brilliantly researched and detailed history with such intensely imagined fiction?\' Michael Frayn?As always it is a pleasure to be in Zadie Smith?s mind . . . Dickens may be dead, but Smith, thankfully, is alive? New York Times?Zadie Smith?s Victorian-set masterpiece holds a mirror up to Britain . . . The Fraud is the genuine article? Independent?Smith?s dazzling historical novel combines deft writing and strenuous construction in a tale of literary London and the horrors of slavery? Guardian

Bol

The extraordinary first historical novel from bestselling author of White Teeth Zadie Smith. 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 skeptical. 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, a star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story. The 'Tichborne Trial' 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.'

Fnac

Zadie Smith (Auteur) - Verschenen op 06/06/2024 bij Penguin Group

Amazon

Pages: 400, Edition: Heruitgave, Paperback, PENGUIN