Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Book Note: Jo Nesbø's Macbeth

Nesbø, Jo. Macbeth. London: Hogarth Shakespeare, 2018.

We've been dealing with some heavy, darker material here at Bardfilm lately, and I have one more in that vein before we turn to some lighter stuff.

The most recent novel in the Hogarth Shakespeare series is Macbeth, a retelling of . . . Macbeth.

I haven't read any other works by Jo Nesbø, and I don't think I'm in the target audience for his kind of thriller. We have here a dark, gritty, drug-and motorcycle gang-filled story about a town, its corrupt police force, and the formerly-drug-addicted Macbeth, who (at the start) wants to clean up the town and the force.

Let me give you a flavor of the book to see if it's what you'd like to be reading. Here's the chapter where Macbeth and Banquo encounter the Weïrd Sisters:







And here's a scene you may recognize from your previous reading(s) of Macbeth:


It's a dark and sordid setting where the stakes are high and could be used for great good—or become corrupt and cause great harm. In other words, it's Macbeth.

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Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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