Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Gap of Time | 2015 | Edward St. Aubyn | Buy |
| 2 | Shylock is My Name | 2016 | Edward St. Aubyn | Buy |
| 3 | Vinegar Girl | 2016 | Edward St. Aubyn | Buy |
| 4 | Hag-Seed | 2016 | Edward St. Aubyn | Buy |
| 5 | New Boy | 2017 | Edward St. Aubyn | Buy |
| 6 | Dunbar | 2017 | Edward St. Aubyn | Buy |
| 7 | Macbeth | 2018 | Edward St. Aubyn | Buy |
The Hogarth Shakespeare project commissioned major novelists to retell Shakespeare’s plays in contemporary settings. Edward St. Aubyn contributed Dunbar (2017), a retelling of King Lear in which the aging patriarch is a media tycoon losing his grip on power and sanity as his daughters circle. Other contributors to the series include Jeanette Winterson (The Gap of Time, retelling The Winter’s Tale), Howard Jacobson (Shylock is My Name, retelling The Merchant of Venice), Anne Tyler (Vinegar Girl, retelling The Taming of the Shrew), Margaret Atwood (Hag-Seed, retelling The Tempest), and Jo Nesbo (Macbeth).
The project produced seven books between 2015 and 2018, each author bringing their own style and concerns to their chosen play. The results varied widely, which was part of the point: seeing how different writers engage with the same source material. St. Aubyn’s Dunbar worked particularly well, since his expertise in writing about dysfunctional families of wealth and privilege mapped naturally onto Lear’s story.