International Praise for Shylock Is My Name:
“[An] ebullient riff on Shakespeare… [a] blend of purposeful deja vu and Jewish fatalism…Jacobson’s highflying wit is more Stoppardian than Shakespearean, even amid rom-com subplots and phallocentric jests equally well suited to Elizabethan drama as to the world of Judd Apatow.”
— The New York Times Book Review
“Jacobson… has delivered with authority and style… [a] deft artist firmly in control, offering witty twists to a play long experienced by many as a racial tragedy.”
-– The Washington Post
“Sharply written, profoundly provocative.”
–The Huffington Post
“The Shylock of the novel is … a character in search of an author, or at least an author who will write him fully, fill in the blanks and give him a voice where once he was voiceless. And in Jacobson, after just over 400 years, he has found a mensch who has done—with considerable skill—exactly that.”
— The Daily Beast
“Stimulating… Jacobson is ideally suited to take on ‘Merchant.’”
— The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“It is delicious…Jacobson is one of our finest writers.”
— Forward
“A funny and insightful reimagining of The Merchant of Venice…Jacobson is uniquely qualified to take on The Merchant of Venice.”
— The Miami Herald
“A serious comic masterpiece.”
–- The Spectator (UK)
“Supremely stylish, probing and unsettling…This Shylock is a sympathetic character… both savagely funny and intellectually searching, both wise and sophistical, intimate and coldly controlling… Jacobson’s writing is virtuoso. He is a master of shifting tones, from the satirical to the serious. His prose has the sort of elastic precision you only get from a writer who is truly in command.”
— The Independent (UK)
“Jacobson takes the play’s themes – justice, revenge, mercy, Jews and Christians, Jew-hatred, fathers and daughters – and works away at them with dark humour and rare intelligence… This is Jacobson at his best. There is no funnier writer in English today. Not just laugh-out-loud humour, though there is plenty of that, including wonderful jokes about circumcision and masturbation. But a sharp, biting humour, which stabs home in a single line… This is one of his best novels yet.”
– Jewish Chronicle (UK)
“Part remake, part satire and part symposium, Jacobson’s Merchant is less Shakespeare retold than Shakespeare reverse-engineered… in these juicy, intemperate, wisecracking squabbles, Jacobson really communicates with Shakespeare’s play, teasing out the lacunae, quietly adjusting its emphases … and making startlingly creative use of the centuries-old playscript.”
–-Daily Telegraph (UK)
“Jacobson, with glorious chutzpah, gives Shylock his Act V, and the end when it comes is extremely satisfying… Provocative, caustic and bold.”
–- Financial Times (UK)
“Jacobson is a novelist of ideas… What is added to a great work in the rewriting? Do we need the argot of the 21st century because the original is now intimidatingly remote? [Shylock Is My Name] is a moving, disturbing and compelling riposte to the blithe resolution offered in the urtext.”
— Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
“Jacobson treats Shylock less as a product of Shakespeare’s culture and imagination than as a real historical figure emblematic of Jewish experience—an approach that gives the novel peculiar vigour.”
– Prospect Magazine (UK)
“When Shylock and Strulovitch are swapping jokes, stories, and fears, the tale is energetic…a work that stands on its own.”
– Publishers Weekly
“The Merchant is well-suited to Jacobson, a Philip Roth–like British writer known for his sterling prose and Jewish themes….full of the facile asides and riffs for which Jacobson has been praised.” — Kirkus
