Final day of our Fall Sale! Join BookBrowse today and discover exceptional books for only $3 / Month.

Summary and Reviews of The Fraud by Zadie Smith

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

The Fraud

A Novel

by Zadie Smith
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • First Published:
  • Sep 5, 2023, 464 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jun 2024, 0 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Book Summary

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."

1
A Very Large Hole

A filthy boy stood on the doorstep. He might be scrubbed of all that dirt, eventually - but not of so many orange freckles. No more than fourteen, with skinny, unstable legs like a marionette, he kept pitching forward, shifting soot into the hall. Still, the woman who'd opened the door - easily amused, susceptible to beauty - found she couldn't despise him.

'You're from Tobin's?'

'Yes, missus. Here about the ceiling. Fell in, didn't it?'

'But two men were requested!'

'All up in London, missus. Tiling. Fearsome amount of tiling needs doing in London, madam . . .'

He saw of course that she was an old woman, but she didn't move or speak like one. A high bosom, handsome, her face had few wrinkles and her hair was black. Above her chin, a half-moon line, turned upside down. Such ambiguities were more than the boy could unravel. He deferred to the paper in his hand, reading slowly:

'Number One, St James-es Villas, St James-es Road, Tunbridge Wells. The name'...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
  1. What did you know about the historical figures and events around which this novel is centered—William Ainsworth, the Tichborne Trial, and Andrew Bogle and the Hope Plantation? How did this story shape your understanding of pieces of history you already knew, or inspire you to inquire deeper into what you didn't?
  2. Discuss the relationship between Mrs. Touchet and William. Besides familial ties, what about their personalities, ideologies, and interests maintains their bond until William's death?
  3. What kind of legacy do you think Mrs. Touchet (as depicted in the novel) would have left on art and culture had she not been a woman, and/or born into her particular class of society? Compare the way her perspective guides the narration ...
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

One of Smith's gifts is for creating complicated characters who don't know themselves as well as they think they do. There are many overlapping power structures at play in The Fraud, and its characters are often unaware of their own position within them. But as always in Smith's work, there is no easy moral to the story – there are only people and the lives they inhabit...continued

Full Review (862 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Grace Graham-Taylor).

Media Reviews

The New York Review of Books
Smith is never solemn ... Her curiosity seems endless, she's willing to let the past surprise her, and though the book doesn't offer a new form of historical fiction, I would bet that it does represent a new moment in the career of Zadie Smith.

Booklist (starred review)
Smith, in her most commanding novel to date, dramatizes with all-too relevant insights crucial questions of veracity and mendacity, privilege and tyranny, survival and self, trust and betrayal ... Smith is always a must-read, and this spectacularly entertaining and resonant historical novel will have enormous appeal.

Library Journal (starred review)
The cultural and literary life of Victorian England erupts vibrantly from each page of this extraordinary novel ... Smith wrestles contemporary themes surrounding women's independence, racism, and class disparity from centuries-old events ... Readers of Geraldine Brooks or Hilary Mantel will be enthralled.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Mesmerizing ... Smith weaves Eliza's shrewd and entertaining recollections of her life, a somber account of Bogle's ancestry and past, brief excerpts from Ainsworth's books, and historic trial transcripts into a seamless and stimulating mix, made all the more lively by her juxtaposing of imagination with first-and secondhand accounts and facts. The result is a triumph of historical fiction.

Kirkus Reviews
Historical fiction doesn't seem to bring out Smith's strongest gifts; this rather pallid narrative lacks the zest of her previous novels' depictions of contemporary life...Intelligent and thoughtful but not quite at this groundbreaking writer's usual level of excellence.

Reader Reviews

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Women's Influence in the British Abolition Movement

Hannah MoreIn The Fraud, Eliza's lover Frances is a passionate abolitionist whose commitment to the cause infects Eliza with a similar sense of urgency. Britain's Slavery Abolition Act was passed in 1833, freeing at least 800,000 people from bondage in the Caribbean, South America, and Canada. The act followed decades of campaigns from abolitionist groups, who had been fighting to end the practice since the 1780s. An often-overlooked group who were influential in the fight to end slavery were women – figures such as Hannah More, Mary Prince, and Elizabeth Heyrick (whose house Eliza and Frances visit in The Fraud) were pivotal to the abolitionist cause.

Hannah More wrote pamphlets and poems which helped popularize the abolitionist cause in its...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Fraud, try these:

  • Prima Facie jacket

    Prima Facie

    by Suzie Miller

    Published 2025

    About this book

    Based on the Olivier and Tony Award-winning play, Suzie Miller's Prima Facie is an unforgettable story of what happens when a victim is asked to navigate a system that is not set up to accommodate the lived experience of sexual assault survivors.

  • Beyond the Door of No Return jacket

    Beyond the Door of No Return

    by David Diop

    Published 2024

    About this book

    More by this author

    The hotly anticipated new novel by David Diop, winner of the International Booker Prize.

We have 4 read-alikes for The Fraud, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Zadie Smith
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Playground
    Playground
    by Richard Powers
    The primary narrator of Richard Powers' latest novel, Playground, is Todd Keane, who at 57 years old...
  • Book Jacket: The Empusium
    The Empusium
    by Olga Tokarczuk
    Not long after checking into Willi Opitz's "Guesthouse for Gentlemen," young Mieczysław Wojnicz...
  • Book Jacket
    Suggested in the Stars
    by Yoko Tawada
    In Scattered All Over the Earth, Yoko Tawada's 2018 lightly dystopian novel, a ragtag group of young...
  • Book Jacket: Shred Sisters
    Shred Sisters
    by Betsy Lerner
    "No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister" is a wry aphorism that appears late in ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Bog Wife
    by Kay Chronister

    Five West Virginia siblings unearth secrets after the rupture of a supernatural bargain tying their fate to their land.

  • Book Jacket

    In the Garden of Monsters
    by Crystal King

    A woman with no past, a man who knows her, and a monstrous garden that separates their worlds.

Book Club Giveaway!
Win Let Us Descend

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward imagines the life of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War in this instant classic.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J O the B

and be entered to win..