Shylock is My Name : The Merchant of Venice Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare)

Howard Jacobson
Shylock is My Name : The Merchant of Venice Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare)
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Shylock is My Name : The Merchant of Venice Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare)
ISBN: 9780701188993
Publication Date: 1 February 2016

Man Booker Prize-winner and our great chronicler of Jewish life revisits Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Who is this guy, Dad? What is he doing here?'

With an absent wife and a daughter going off the rails, wealthy art collector and philanthropist Simon Strulovitch is in need someone to talk to. So when he meets Shylock at a cemetery in Cheshire's Golden Triangle, he invites him back to his house. It's the beginning of a remarkable friendship.

Elsewhere in the Golden Triangle, the rich, manipulative Plurabelle (aka Anna Livia Plurabelle Cleopatra A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever Christine) is the face of her own TV series, existing in a bubble of plastic surgery and lavish parties. She shares prejudices and a barbed sense of humour with her loyal friend D'Anton, whose attempts to play Cupid involve Strulovitch's daughter - and put a pound of flesh on the line.

Howard Jacobson's version of

The Merchant of Venice bends time to its own advantage as it asks what it means to be a father, a Jew and a merciful human being in the modern world.