The Fraud: Zadie Smith

Queen’s Park resident Zadie Smith returns to the festival with her new novel

Zadie Smith’s new novel The Fraud is set in the 1870s in Kilburn and Jamaica.  The famous ‘Tichborne Claimant’ trial has galvanized Britain.  Two people, a widowed housekeeper and a former slave, have very different perspectives on the case and what it says about Britain, its people and its history.  Zadie’s first historical novel explores how, in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is true can be a complicated task. She will be in conversation with author and journalist Alex Clark.

Zadie Smith

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.