The fraud
Smith, Zadie2023
Large Print
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 had lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of a many interest: 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 a being a bully and 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 realise. 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 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 Britian, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of 'other people.'
Main title:
The fraud / Zadie Smith.
Author:
Smith, Zadie, author
Work:
Edition:
Large print edition.
Imprint:
New York : Random House Large Print, [2023]©2023
Collation:
577 pages (large print) ; 24 cm.
ISBN:
9780593792643
Language:
English
Subject:
Ainsworth, William Harrison, 1805-1882 -- FictionDoughty-Tichborne, Roger Charles, 1829-1854 -- FictionFalse personation -- FictionFreed persons -- FictionHousekeepers -- FictionSelf-deception -- FictionTrials -- England -- History -- 19th century -- FictionTruthfulness and falsehood -- FictionWomen -- Social conditions -- FictionGreat Britain -- History -- 19th century -- FictionLarge type booksHistorical fictionLegal fiction (Literature)
BRN:
461018