The Fraud

It is the year 1873. Eliza Touchet is the mistress of the house—and cousin by marriage—of a famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth. Mrs. Touchet is a woman with many interests (literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, her women), but she is also skeptical: she suspects that her cousin has no talent; she believes that her successful friend, Charles Dickens, is a harasser and a moralist; and she thinks that England is a land of facades, where nothing is quite what it seems. But a case captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England: the Tichborne trial in London, in which Andrew Bogle, who was raised as a slave on a plantation in Jamaica, has become the star witness. Bogle knows that every piece of sugar has a price, that the rich deceive the poor, and that his future depends on telling the right story. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he claims to be? Or is it a fraud? In a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real is a complicated task... Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Great Britain, fraud and authenticity, and the mystery of 'other people'.