Like his Man Booker prize-winning The Finkler Question, Howard Jacobson’s latest book, Shylock Is My Name, focuses on what it means to be Jewish in a Gentile world. Part of a series of books released for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the novel updates The Merchant of Venice.
Simon Strulovitch, a wealthy philanthropist, encounters Shylock in a graveyard, and the two strike up a friendship. Shylock is pretty much as Shakespeare wrote him, while the rest of the characters, and the play’s love story, have been transposed to the British upper classes. Portia is a wealthy heiress and reality TV star; her suitor Antonia is now D’Anton, an art importer; and Gratiano is Gratan, a footballer with a fondness for the Nazi salute. Like most of Jacobson’s work, this is a darkly comic tale, which, despite the pithy one-liners, delves into the deepest recesses of the human heart.