Search results for ""Author Clive Sinclair""

Since his first public appearance in the late 1590s, Shylock has been synonymous with antisemitism. Many of his bon mots remain common currency among Jew-haters; among them "3000 ducats" and the immortal "pound of flesh". But Shakespeare, being Shakespeare, was incapable of inventing anyone so uninteresting; instead he affords Shylock such ambiguity that some of his other lines have become keynotes for believers in shared humanity and tolerance. Following Shakespeare's example these stories - all inspired by The Merchant of Venice - range from the comic to the melancholic. Many pivot on significant productions of the play: Stockholm in 1944, London in 2012, and Venice in 2016. Some are concerned with domestic matters, others with the political, including one - more outrageous than the others - that links Shylock via Israel with the American presidency; most combine both. Running through these linked stories - of which there are seven, like the ages of man - is the cycle of family life, with all its comedy and tragedy.

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Clive Sinclair's first collection of stories won the Somerset Maugham Award.His second was short-listed for the inaugural Dylan Thomas Award.His third won both the PEN Silver Pen, and the Jewish Quarterly Award for fiction.This is his fourth.The new stories range from New Orleans and Texas to Peru and Venice.Their subjects are loss, the fear of loss, and love, most especially that between husbands and wives, fathers and sons.Their cast includes the quick and the dead, the real and the imagined: Davy Crockett, Kinky Friedman, Captain Haddock, Princess Diana, and Shylock.They are as cruel as life, and as funny.

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