It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the a Scottish housekeeper, and 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. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story. Based on real historical events, this is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of "other people."