Detective Alan Grant, confined to bed after an accident, begins to take in interest in the much-maligned king after studying his portrait. Richard III gets a sympathetic makeover in Josephine Tey's 1951 whodunnit, which reads like a cross between Rear Window and Time Team. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (Richard III) Just as Macbeth and Lear subvert the natural order of things, Ahab takes on Nature in his determination to kill his prey – and his hubristic quest is doomed from the start. Captain Ahab is "a grand, ungodly, god-like man … above the common" whose pursuit of the great white whale is a fable about obsession and over-reaching. Melville's Great American Novel draws on both Biblical and Shakespearean myths. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (Macbeth/King Lear) I tried to channel some of this, and recreate the psychology of a fearful, superstitious age. In Jacobean times, the occult was accepted as part of everyday life, and witchcraft was both feared and sought out as a useful resource. Its sinister magic is also the inspiration behind my historical novel Dark Aemilia. But Macbeth is my favourite – a preference I apparently share with Jo Nesbo, who recently announced that his new noir crime novel would be based on the Scottish play.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |