Zadie Smith at First Parish Church

Harvard Book Store welcomes acclaimed essayist, playwright, and bestselling novelist ZADIE SMITH for a discussion of her latest novel The Fraud. She will be joined in conversation by AMANDA CLAYBAUGH—Samuel Zemurray Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor of English and Harvard College Professor.

Ticketing

Please Note: Tickets to this event are sold out. There is no waitlist for this event. People interested in waiting in a stand-by line at the door for this sold-out event are welcome to. If any seats are still open five minutes before the event begins, we will turn them over to those in the stand-by line and have them purchase book-included tickets on a first-come, first-served basis. Of course we can’t guarantee that those in the stand-by line will get in, but we are often able to let in some of those patiently waiting. 

Each ticket will include one hardcover copy of The Fraud. Due to a change in Zadie's schedule, she is no loner able to personalize books after the presentation. We apologize for any inconvenience. 

About The Fraud

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 realize. 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”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—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.”

Mask Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.