About the Author

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.

Reviews

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'*