Shylock is My Name

The second novel in The Hogarth Shakespeare Series   ‘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 "The funniest British novelist since Kingsley Amis or Tom Sharpe". - Mail on SundayThe Hogarth Shakespeare Series sees Shakespeare’s works retold by acclaimed and bestselling novelists of today. Other titles in the series are: The Gap of Time, Shylock is My Name, Vinegar Girl, Hag Seed, New Boy and Dunbar by Edward St. Aubyn (due in October 2017).