Shylock is My Name

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

‘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...

‘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.