Shakespeare

It must have seemed a good idea to someone: commissioning a range of well-known novelists to ‘reimagine Shakespeare’s plays for a 21st-century audience’. The first six novels have come from irreproachably literary authors of the calibre of Jeanette Winterson (The Winter’s Tale) and Margaret Atwood (The Tempest). Now, however, we have something a little different: Jo Nesbo, the Norwegian crime writer, has recast Macbeth as a thriller, allegedly set in 1970, though this timeframe should not be taken too literally. The plot is very loosely connected with Shakespeare’s. The location is a crumbling city in a dystopian country where many of the names have a Scottish ring. Prostitution, gambling and