In Depth:  Niv Lobo

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‘A person is a bottomless thing’: Zadie Smith and glimpses of grace

‘A person is a bottomless thing’: Zadie Smith and glimpses of grace

Niv Lobo
Niv Lobo

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.