Truth and fiction. Jamaica and Britain. Who deserves to tell their story? Zadie Smith returns with her first historical novel. Kilburn; 1873. The 'Tichborne Trial' has captivated the widowed Scottish housekeeper Mrs Eliza Touchet and all of England. Readers are at odds over whether the defendant is who he claims to be - or an imposter. Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature; justice; abolitionism; class; her novelist cousin and his wives; this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects England of being a land of façades; in which nothing is quite what it seems. Andrew Bogle meanwhile finds himself the star witness; his future depending on telling the right story. Growing 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. Based on real historical events; The Fraud is a dazzling novel about how in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception; deciding what's true can prove a complicated task.