'Immediately pleasurable... touching and suspenseful

This book is beautifully written, the characters intriguing

Fred D'Aguiar's powerful and original work employs all kinds of poetic rhythms and shapes to dramatise the dreams, struggles and desires of his protagonists. He has helped to create a new kind of novel... How beautifully D'Aguiar writes about eroticism and sensuality. The novel is a paean to love lost and found again

Evocative

D'Aguiar's forte is in getting under the skin of his character... an ambitious novel

A magical tale full of potent emotion

His sentences glow with poetry, creating pictures that stay with the reader

Funny, touching and surprising

a gentle, easy-reading tale of happenstance and second chances

Tense and thrilling

[A] sprightly tale… [With] a lightness of touch

Funny and touching with a fast-moving plot – the perfect Summer read.

[A] warm, witty and wise novel.

An up-to-date, global page-turner.

a powerful book and a cautionary tale... it's also a touching celebration of human determination in the overcoming of adversity.

Darkly funny debut

Funny and warm, heartbreaking too. Impressive debut!

emotional, raw, deeply moving and…funny too

...a really rather good YA crossover ... while Khorsandi's novel tackles some pretty big subjects, it does so while making you laugh out loud

I really couldn’t put this book down. It’s not just for young people but if you have a teenage daughter, please make her read it.

I am loving Shappi Khorsandi's Nina is Not OK, she is making me care about 'Nina' so much that I get anxious on her behalf

Howard Jacobson’s masterful retelling of The Merchant of Venice celebrates the play but speaks for itself about being Jewish… Jacobson [is] a skilful craftsman as well as an artist of rare individuality… He has written a comic novel which poses serious questions. He has been both inventive and faithful to Shakespeare. And as a bonus, he gives us a good many excellent Jewish jokes.

Jacobson preserves the sense of ambiguity and uncertainty…that gives Shakespeare’s play much of its unsettling force… [My Name is Shylock] is the product of deep thought, deep feeling, deep scholarship. But this book is never leaden or lenten. It is fresh, exuberant, funny, almost preposterously entertaining and engaging. It is also possessed of an irony, wit and restless addiction to exploring conflicting arguments that leaves you feeling enriched… Jacobson’s prose is…vibrant, inventive, precise, arresting and full of memorable cadences and elegant modulations… A stunning achievement.

My Name is Shylock does ample justice to the legacy of Shakespeare’s classic story… Jacobson has proved that his command of the art of storytelling is worthy of renewed praise.

Jacobson’s Mancunian Jewish voice (last seen to splendid effect in The Mighty Walzer) is rare enough. But when this voice is combined with high culture and rude comedy it is, despite its abject subject matter, utterly life-affirming.

Compelling retelling.

Expect …The kind of comic intelligence that has made his name

Set in a world of unimaginable wealth, football player celebrity, cosmetic surgery and reality TV, My Name Is Shylock does ample justice to the legacy of Shakespeare's classic story of honouring a debt with perhaps the ultimate sacrifice.

The winner of the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question pulls off a neat trick in this almost perversely serious comic novel, creating a parallel world to Shakespeare's Venice in the wealthy, cultured Golden Triangle of Cheshire, and peopling it with parallel-ish characters...The author shows full power and ingenuity putting Strulovitch and Shylock in the same place and time.

Explores the meaning of Shakespeare's play, uses its enduring relevance to examine the contemporary world and challenges us to interrogate our prejudices...Energetic, authentic and biting.

That Shylock should thus materialise for a present-day Jewish protagonist, and become...a confidant, an exemplar...an advisor is a brilliant conceit...a powerful reimagining and reinvention.

Alive with humanity and fierce debate, the book offers a nice twist on that notorious pound of flesh.

Funny and dark by turns… A gripping tale of love, plastic surgery and that notorious pound of flesh… This warm, witty and brilliantly written book provides a challenging feast for the imagination.

A master of serious-minded comedy, Jacobson is one of the greats of his generation.

Brilliantly witty inventive.

A crackling dialectic on fatherhood, faith and what it means to be merciful… The echoes of Shakespeare’s story in Strulovitch’s are obvious…But the quips and the characters are pure Jacobson… It’s a treat.

Hilarious reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

Offering witty twists to a play long experienced by many as a racial tragedy.

Affectionate retelling… At the heart of the novel is the profound question of whether obligation…should be tempered by mercy.

Even those familiar with that book will be surprised by the twists now composed by Jacobson, whose most idle words have purpose, as well as point… Clever mockery and racial self-depreciation give the novel its provocative brilliance… Jacobson pours the quality of mercy through a large strainer, but Shylock’s fortitude and unswerving tribal fidelity are offered as a kind of redemption, a way, if you like, of forgiving Shakespeare. And of sending you back to him, not only just to check

As characteristically ingenious, witty and dark as his musings on what it means to be Jewish.

It hooks you into a great debate.

I don’t think any other author writes as well about the experience of Jewishness and he manages to be serious but with that laconic humour.

An intelligent, funny and enjoyable novel.

For my favourite novel I’m choosing Shylock is my Name… It’s a dark, witty, provocative re-imagine of Shakespeare…seriously brilliant on many levels.