The Fraud

No one understands humans better. As this novel shows, there is no better guide to people and their bottomlessness than Smith herself * iNews * This was really delightful. 10⁄10. Zadie Smith is a genius – Brandon Taylor author of The Late Americans A novel full of people, ideas, humour, feeling and something like moral truth – the stuff of life * Evening Standard * Searingly original [and] virtuosic … the book masterfully depicts post-emancipation Britain as it ruptures along faultlines of class and race * Vogue * Brilliant. A Dickensian delight * Los Angeles Times * The Fraud is unlike anything you’ll read this year: a charismatic, cerebral novel that asks us to consider the greatest fraud of all, that of one man claiming to hold the key to another’s freedom * Irish Times * Affecting and devastating … In typical Zadie style, the narrative structure and decade leaping require you to pay attention – but you’re heavily rewarded with the sheer breadth of the novel and its vividly painted characters * Independent, ‘24 best summer books 2024’ * A wonderful meditation on truth and falsehood, and the boundaries between fact and fiction * Spectator * A big, rich saga, tumbling with characters and big issues (feminism, slavery, truth) * The Times, ‘Best Novels of 2023’ * The Fraud is a complex mosaic of interweaving plots … The novel pulls off the trick of being both splendidly modern and authentically old and the characters are varied and entertaining * Independent, ‘Best Books of 2023’ * Ambitious in both style and subject matter, and bursting with Smith’s trademark sprightly dialogue, The Fraud is also very funny * Guardian, ‘Summer reading’ *

Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time; as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia; three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free and Intimations; a collection of short stories, Grand Union; and the play, The Wife of Willesden, adapted from Chaucer. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie Smith was born in north-west London, where she still lives. The Fraud is her first historical novel.