Shylock is My Name

SHAKESPEARE RETOLD: Nine iconic plays transformed by the best novelists of our time, with covers by Michael Craig-Martin.

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is brilliantly reinvented by Howard Jacobson, in his merciless, sharp and funny story of revenge, justice and antisemitism.

With an absent wife and a daughter going off the rails, wealthy art collector and philanthropist Simon Strulovitch is in need of 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…

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.

‘Inspired…It does what any good literary subversion should do: deepens and enhances one’s appreciation of the original’ Guardian

‘Jacobson’s prose has the sort of elastic precision you only get from a writer who is truly in command… There’s also deep and sincere soul-searching going on here’ Independent

SHAKESPEARE RETOLD: Time travel. Zombies. Power-hungry media moguls. This is Shakespeare as you’ve never seen him before: nine iconic plays transformed by the best novelists of our time, with covers by Michael Craig-Martin.