The Fraud
Zadie Smith · 2023
The widow of a minor Scottish novelist becomes entangled in a Victorian legal fraud case and the testimony of a Jamaican former slave. Smith's most formally traditional novel is also her most expansive meditation on class, race, and who gets to be a witness.
The case against
Tiny chapters, some scarcely a paragraph, chop the Victorian material into confetti, and momentum dies every other page. The Tichborne trial repeats itself the way real trials do, which is faithful and deadly; Bogle's history, the best hundred pages here, arrives late enough to feel like a second novel sent to rescue the first.
Best of Last 10 Years · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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