Shylock Is My Name
William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice Retold: A Novel
Hogarth Shakespeare
- By: Howard Jacobson
- Narrated by: Michael Kitchen
- Length: 7 hours 26 minutes
Description
Man Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson brings his singular brilliance to this modern re-imagining of one of Shakespeare’s most unforgettable characters: Shylock
Winter, a cemetery, Shylock. In this provocative and profound interpretation of The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is juxtaposed against his present-day counterpart in the character of art dealer and conflicted father Simon Strulovitch. With characteristic irony, Jacobson presents Shylock as a man of incisive wit and passion, concerned still with questions of identity, parenthood, anti-Semitism and revenge.
While Strulovich struggles to reconcile himself to his daughter Beatrice's “betrayal” of her family and heritage—as she is carried away by the excitement of Manchester high society, and into the arms of a footballer notorious for giving a Nazi salute on the field—Shylock alternates grief for his beloved wife with rage against his own daughter's rejection of her Jewish upbringing. Culminating in a shocking twist on Shylock’s demand for the infamous pound of flesh, Jacobson’s insightful retelling examines contemporary, acutely relevant questions of Jewish identity while maintaining a poignant sympathy for its characters and a genuine spiritual kinship with its antecedent—a drama which Jacobson himself considers to be “the most troubling of Shakespeare’s plays for anyone, but, for an English novelist who happens to be Jewish, also the most challenging.”
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Hogarth Shakespeare Series

Shylock Is My Name
By: Howard Jacobson
Narrated by: Michael Kitchen
Length: 7 hours 26 minutes
Abridged: No
Man Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson brings his singular brilliance to this modern re-imagining of one of Shakespeare’s most unforgettable characters: Shylock
Winter, a cemetery, Shylock. In this provocative and profound interpretation of The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is juxtaposed against his present-day counterpart in the character of... Read more »

Vinegar Girl
By: Anne Tyler
Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
Length: 5 hours 56 minutes
Abridged: No
Pulitzer Prize winner and American master Anne Tyler brings us an inspired, witty and irresistible contemporary take on one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies.
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Dunbar
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Narrated by: Henry Goodman
Length: 7 hours 16 minutes
Abridged: No
A reimagining of one of Shakespeare's most well-read tragedies, by the contemporary, critically acclaimed master of domestic drama
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Length: 5 hours 22 minutes
Abridged: No
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Arriving at his fifth school in as many years, diplomat’s son Osei Kokote knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day—so he’s lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one... Read more »

Macbeth
By: Jo Nesbo
Length: 17 hours 25 minutes
Abridged: No
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018
Shakespeare’s dark and tragic play retold in a heart-pounding New York Times bestselling thriller from the author of The Snowman and The Thirst.
Set in the 1970s in a run-down, rainy industrial town, Jo Nesbo's Macbeth centers around a police force struggling to shed an incessant drug problem. Duncan, chief... Read more »

Hag-Seed
By: Margaret Atwood
Narrated by: R.H. Thomson
Length: 8 hours 11 minutes
Abridged: No
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved author of The Handmaid’s Tale reimagines Shakespeare’s final, great play, The Tempest, in a gripping and emotionally rich novel of passion and revenge.
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Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins, Mark Bazeley & Ben Onwukwe
Length: 7 hours 1 minutes
Abridged: No
The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s “late plays.” It tells the story of a king whose jealousy results in the banishment of his baby daughter and the death of his beautiful wife. His daughter is found and brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of extraordinary events, father and daughter, and eventually mother... Read more »
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