"All the twists and turns of the Scottish play"
A number of the leading novelists of our time, from Margaret Atwood to Anne Tyler and Howard Jacobson, have reworked Shakespeare's plays as part of Hogarth's recent project. This time its Scandi-Noir big hitter Jo Nesbo who turns his hand to a new version of The Tragedy of Macbeth (1623).
Nesbo's story is set in a location typical of the genre, the Kingdom of Fife, which seems to be somewhere between Scotland and Norway. The weather is brutal, the streets are mean and shady characters deal hard drugs, in this case 'brew', against a backdrop of gang murder.
Lording over the city is swat team head Macbeth who lives with his girl, the aptly named 'Lady', who manages the most prestigious casino in town. In the course of an drug operation Macbeth receives a prophesy from a trio of street girls; the Police Department Chief job will be his so long as he agrees not to interfere with the production and supply of brew in the town.
This effectively bleak backdrop is a convincing adaptation of the Highlands in Shakespeare's play but Nesbo piles on a cinematic flourish to further increase the tension. "I love you above everything else on this earth and in the sky above", Macbeth tells Lady in a line straight from a cinema trailer.
Even by Jo Nesbo's standards this is a dark story of murder, double crossing, drug addiction and serious crime. At its best it effectively adapts Macbeth for a modern readership desensitised to all but the the most aggressive brutality thanks to the huge canon of Nordic Noir that now exists.
If there is a problem with Jo Nesbo's Macbeth its one of scale; somehow Shakespeare's shortest play has become Nesbo's longest novel.
Nesbo's story is set in a location typical of the genre, the Kingdom of Fife, which seems to be somewhere between Scotland and Norway. The weather is brutal, the streets are mean and shady characters deal hard drugs, in this case 'brew', against a backdrop of gang murder.
Lording over the city is swat team head Macbeth who lives with his girl, the aptly named 'Lady', who manages the most prestigious casino in town. In the course of an drug operation Macbeth receives a prophesy from a trio of street girls; the Police Department Chief job will be his so long as he agrees not to interfere with the production and supply of brew in the town.
This effectively bleak backdrop is a convincing adaptation of the Highlands in Shakespeare's play but Nesbo piles on a cinematic flourish to further increase the tension. "I love you above everything else on this earth and in the sky above", Macbeth tells Lady in a line straight from a cinema trailer.
Even by Jo Nesbo's standards this is a dark story of murder, double crossing, drug addiction and serious crime. At its best it effectively adapts Macbeth for a modern readership desensitised to all but the the most aggressive brutality thanks to the huge canon of Nordic Noir that now exists.
If there is a problem with Jo Nesbo's Macbeth its one of scale; somehow Shakespeare's shortest play has become Nesbo's longest novel.
All the twists and turns of the Scottish Play through a typically blood stained Nesbo lens
3.5
3.5
Macbeth by Jo Nesbo, translated by Don Bartlet, published by Hogarth 512 pages
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