Shylock is My Name: The Merchant of Venice Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare) Audiobook (Free)

‘Who is he, 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 looking for someone to speak to. Therefore when he fits Shylock at a cemetery in Cheshire’s Golden Triangle, he invites him back to his house. It’s the starting of an extraordinary friendship.

Elsewhere in the Golden Triangle, the rich, manipulative Plurabelle (aka Anna Livia Plurabelle Cleopatra An engineering marvel is a Joy Forever Christine) may be the face of her own TV series, existing in a bubble of cosmetic surgery and lavish parties. She stocks prejudices and a barbed feeling of humour with her loyal friend D’Anton, whose efforts to try out Cupid involve Strulovitch’s daughter – and put a pound of flesh on the line.

Howard Jacobson’s version of The Vendor of Venice bends time to its advantage since it asks what it means to be always a dad, a Jew and a merciful individual in the modern world.