Zadie Smith is one of my favourite living novelists. Her latest, The Fraud (2023), takes up the real-life Tichborne case, which captivated the British public in the 1860s-70s.
This historical setting allows Zadie to articulate all kinds of contemporary anxieties around truth in a post-truth world, and about the possibility of justice when a court case becomes a spectacle, or even a piece of theatre.
Although these parallels with the present day were sometimes drawn a little heavy-handedly, Smith’s characteristic warmth in developing her protagonist, Eliza Touchet, more than made up for it. Smith gives voice to feelings, questions and griefs with a depth only a skilled writer can — and with an empathy and a wisdom that suggests she is deeply concerned with, and thoughtful about, the human condition.
We all must reckon with abusers
Recent headlines have reported on the shocking case of Stephen Ireland and David Sutton, both jailed for multiple child …