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."
