RACE, IDENTITY AND HISTORICAL NARRATIVE IN SMITH’ THE FRAUD

Abstract

A fascinating examination of the ways in which race and identity interact with the creation of historical narrative in nineteenth-century Britain may be found in Zadie Smith's The Fraud (2023). The story, which is centered on the dramatic Tichborne trial, contrasts the viewpoints of Andrew Bogle, a former slave from Jamaica whose testimony opposes racial prejudice and imperial power, and Eliza Touchet, a woman navigating the expectations of gender and class. Smith exposes how minority voices are either ignored or exploited within prevailing narratives of empire by using these characters to question the selective processes of historical memory.The Fraud highlights how race and diasporic identity influence how the past is told by combining archival detail with fictional reimagining to examine the brittleness of "truth" in both private and public history. In the end, the book shows that historical narrative is a disputed space where authority decides which stories are preserved and which are lost, rather than a neutral record.