Podvod Smith Zadie (2026)

This Czech-language historical novel is Zadie Smiths first work of historical fiction. In 1873, Mrs Eliza Touchet is a Scottish housekeeper and, through marriage, the cousin of the once-famous but now declining writer William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. A woman of many interests, she is drawn to literature, justice, abolitionism and the afterlife, yet she is also deeply sceptical. She suspects that her cousin lacks talent, considers his successful friend Charles Dickens a tyrant and moralist, and regards England as a land of faades where nothing is quite as it seems. Historical events and fiction come together in this story spanning Jamaica and Britain.