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

by Howard Jacobson

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Book cover for Shylock is My Name

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Winner of the Booker Prize

'The funniest British novelist since Kingsley Amis or Tom Sharpe' Mail on Sunday

AS SEEN ON BBC IMAGINE

`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 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.

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.

'Jacobson is quite simply a master of comic precision. He writes like a dream' Evening Standard
  • ISBN10 1781090289
  • ISBN13 9781781090282
  • Publish Date 4 February 2016
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 10 August 2021
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Vintage Publishing
  • Imprint Hogarth
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 288
  • Language English