The second book in the Hogarth Shakespeare series heralds the full-on 2016 anniversary celebration of Shakespeare: Man Booker Prize winner and our great chronicler of Jewish life retells the powerful, controversial story of Shylock. In The Merchant of Venice , the merchant Antonio borrows from the Jewish moneylender Shylock, whom he openly despises, to help fund his friend Bassanio's wooing of the beautiful, prized Portia. Shylock agrees--but on the condition that Antonio promise in return a pound of flesh should he be unable to repay the debt. When Antonio's ships are lost at sea and it becomes clear he cannot, the case goes to court: Antonio must honour his promise--until an unknown lawyer (Portia herself, dressed as a man) arrives and brilliantly picks the case apart. Jacobson takes the great tale of vengeance and cruelty and propels it through space and time to the shiny modern world of Cheshire's Golden Triangle, where we meet a funny, love-driven, vindictive cast of characters very much from our world, confronting Shakespeare's timelessly urgent questions in the 21st century.

'A . . . tender love story . . . This book is alive. It pulses with warmth and intelligence' The Times A wickedly observed novel about falling in love at the end of your life, by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question. At the age of ninety-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything - including her own children. She spends her days stitching morbid samplers and tormenting her two carers with tangled tales of her husbands and affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walks without a frame and speaks without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he's whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. He forgets nothing -especially not the shame of a childhood incident that has long hung over him. There's very little left remaining for either of them. . . But perhaps just enough to heal some of the hurt inflicted along the way, and find new meaning in what's left. * SHORTLISTED FOR THE WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE 2020*