Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting
The Fraud by Zadie Smith
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

The Fraud

Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Narrator Zadie Smith

This audiobook uses AI narration.

Weโ€™re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 12 hours 24 minutes
Language English
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

Brought to you by Penguin.

The extraordinary first historical novel from bestselling author of White Teeth Zadie Smith

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 realise. 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' 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.'

PRAISE FOR ZADIE SMITH:

'A writer of remarkable wit and originality' Observer

'[Smith] packs more intelligence, humour and sheer energy into any given scene than anyone else of her generation' Sunday Telegraph

'A brilliant writer' A M Homes

ยฉ2023 Zadie Smith (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Zadie Smith (Author, Reader)
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.

Zadie Smith (Author, Reader)
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.

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

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 This was really delightful. 10/10. Zadie Smith is a genius Affecting and devastating . . . In typical Zadie style, the narrative structure and decade leaping require you to pay attention โ€“ but youโ€™re heavily rewarded with the sheer breadth of the novel and its vividly painted characters A novel full of people, ideas, humour, feeling and something like moral truth โ€“ the stuff of life No one understands humans better. As this novel shows, there is no better guide to people and their bottomlessness than Smith herself Searingly original [and] virtuosic . . . the book masterfully depicts post-emancipation Britain as it ruptures along faultlines of class and race Brilliant. A Dickensian delight The Fraud is unlike anything youโ€™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 anotherโ€™s freedom A big, rich saga, tumbling with characters and big issues (feminism, slavery, truth) A wonderful meditation on truth and falsehood, and the boundaries between fact and fiction Ambitious in both style and subject matter, and bursting with Smithโ€™s trademark sprightly dialogue, The Fraud is also very funny A rich and sprawling novel with a terrific cast of characters, this is Smith at her best Expand reviews
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting