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The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips
In The Tragedy of Arthur, Arthur Phillips is a writer whose father, also named Arthur Phillips, is a con man who has spent many of the younger Arthur's formative years in jail. The elder Arthur has lived a life where truth is a commodity to be bartered, but one seemingly unshakable truth was his love of Shakespeare. Near the end of his life, the elder Arthur shares with his son a treasure he's kept secret for decades: his discovery of an unpublished Shakespeare play titled "The Tragedy of Arthur." The novel The Tragedy of Arthur contains the entire play, and Arthur Phillips strives to understand whether it's the real deal or his father's greatest con. The Tragedy of Arthur has received mostly positive reviews with the New York Times saying, "For the novelist's art is a cunning ability to lure the reader into treating counterfeit bills as if they were current. And this particular novel - a fictional memoir posing as a fraudulent introduction to a forged play - is a spectacular instance of the confidence game. It is a tribute to Arthur Phillips's singular skill that his work leaves the reader not with resentment at having been tricked but rather with gratitude for the gift of feigned wonder."
