Service95 Recommends is the home of the books we love and reviews from our contributors. The Fraud by Zadie Smith digs into the history of London.
What We Say: “The Fraud is Zadie Smith’s first historical novel, and it’s perfect for justice-seeking, courtroom-drama-loving readers. It’s based on the real Victorian ‘Tichborne trial’, the strange case of a working-class butcher from Australia who claimed he was the long-lost heir to a vast estate and is put on trial as the titular ‘fraud’. Zadie Smith’s kaleidoscopic style flips us between the storylines of Eliza Touchet, a housekeeper with literary connections (hello, Charles Dickens); Andrew Bogle, a former Jamaican slave and key witness; and the trial itself. She dissects race, class and empire through her propulsive novel, which seeks to redress the balance of who gets to be believed, or deceived. ”
What They Say: [The Fraud] offers a vast, acute panoply of London and the English countryside, and successfully locates the social controversies of an era in a handful of characters… As always, it is a pleasure to be in Zadie Smith’s mind, which, as time goes on, is becoming contiguous with London itself. Dickens may be dead, but Smith, thankfully, is alive.” – Karan Mahajan
Available on Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Barnes & Noble
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