Macbeth

by A. J. Hartley, David Hewson

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This is not your parents' Macbeth or the one you read in high-school English class. A dark and bloody tale of a Scottish lord and his beloved wife trying to save their eleventh-century kingdom from its corrupt king, Macbeth: A Novel hurtles toward listeners in gripping contemporary prose, thanks to novelists David Hewson and A. J. Hartley. With the verve of today's fast-paced thrillers, Hewson and Hartley create an electrifying tapestry out of Shakespeare's tale, relaunching two of literature's most powerful characters. Macbeth, a loyal servant to the Scottish crown, has shed blood time and again for his homeland. And yet the country is crumbling around him, torn apart by warring clans and foreign marauders and ruled by a corrupt, self-serving king. Desperate to preserve the kingdom, Macbeth and his wife, Skena, craft an ambitious plan to keep Scotland whole, never intending the tragic spiral of murder, treachery, and personal collapse that ensues.… (more)

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Macbeth is probably my favorite tragedy of Shakespeare's, and I very much enjoyed this novel, which provides greater depth and detail to the tale. It's not just an effort to place the play in novel form - the authors provide a foreword and afterword which explain how they went about taking inspiration from both the play, actual history, and their own imaginations. It's a rich, occasionally overblown, narrative, solidly contextualized in the historical setting of 11th century Scotland.

The audio, as narrated by the great Scottish actor Alan Cumming, is a delight.

4 stars (

)

katiekrug | Oct 27, 2023 |

Not an adaptation of the play, instead Hartley and Hewson have expanded the storyline as a novel, filling in the plot with transitional scenes and offstage scenes as well as altering the language to allow for easier reading than the play. It gives a new perspective on the Macbeths. Hewson's afterword is interesting and informative and explains which parts of the story coincides with Shakespeare's work and with history. It was written exclusively for audio and was brilliantly narrated by [[Alan Cumming]]. An inspired work. (

)

VivienneR | Jun 8, 2021 |

If you don't know the play and don't care to read a script, it is a good way to learn the story. Alan Cummings narration is excellent. It lacks the magnificent language of the orginal. (

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KittyCunningham | Apr 26, 2021 |

This book surprised me by living up to the challenge of expounding on Shakespeare's tale.

Of course, this is the tradition Shakespeare worked in, where stories belonged to no one, and the point was: Does your telling of the story we all know entertain us or teach us something?

The Macbeth and Lady Macbeth of this novel are brutal, sad, tormented souls, realized in a way a novel does, and not simply novelized. Well done. (

)

jordanjones | Feb 21, 2020 |

I quite like this way of presenting the Macbeth story. It feels strange to re-visit the story years after having read the play by Shakespeare and the novel 'Macbest' by Pratchett, though it is well written and easy to read. (

)

JulesGDSide | Nov 29, 2018 |

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Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Hartley, A. J.	—	primary author	all editions	confirmed
Hewson, David	—	main author	all editions	confirmed

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Canonical title

Macbeth

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2012-05-22

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Macbeth

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This is not your parents' Macbeth or the one you read in high-school English class. A dark and bloody tale of a Scottish lord and his beloved wife trying to save their eleventh-century kingdom from its corrupt king, Macbeth: A Novel hurtles toward listeners in gripping contemporary prose, thanks to novelists David Hewson and A. J. Hartley. With the verve of today's fast-paced thrillers, Hewson and Hartley create an electrifying tapestry out of Shakespeare's tale, relaunching two of literature's most powerful characters. Macbeth, a loyal servant to the Scottish crown, has shed blood time and again for his homeland. And yet the country is crumbling around him, torn apart by warring clans and foreign marauders and ruled by a corrupt, self-serving king. Desperate to preserve the kingdom, Macbeth and his wife, Skena, craft an ambitious plan to keep Scotland whole, never intending the tragic spiral of murder, treachery, and personal collapse that ensues.

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