The Fraud, Zadie Smith‘s 2023 novel, is a bit of a departure for her: it is a historical novel, focusing on real people and real events in the late 19th century, specifically the household of the once-acclaimed writer William Harrison Ainsworth and the phenomenon of the Tichborne trial.
The Fraud is also a reflection on aging, tracing the characters over many decades of their lives and an exploration of the 19th century relations between England and its Caribbean colonies, specifically Jamaica.
It succeeds on all fronts.
That it does is a tribute to Smith’s consummate skill as a novelist, to her ability to draw characters and events in sharp lines while not sacrificing the nuance and inflection that makes people real, complicated, and compelling. It is a novel of doubt and uncertainty, and one that resists making pronouncements on any of its characters: even Ainsworth’s vanity and self-obsession are somewhat evened out in the eyes of the protagonist. As such, the use of the Tichborne trial–where an (alleged) imposter returns to claim a fortune–is masterful, both in the enigmatic Jamaican character it introduces and how it amplifies the core question of identity within the novel. In the end–as in reality–the questions of who am I and who are we remain unanswerable, especially if divorced from any particular moment in time.
There is also a delightful and occasionally effectively comedic set of cameos by Charles Dickens, whose success and particular eccentricities loom over Ainsworth’s continued struggles.
I mean … it’s Zadie Smith. If the description piques your interest at all, go read it.