What happens to Macbeth in the hands of Norwegian crime novelist Joe Nesbo?

Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro will be here to discuss the transformation of Shakespeare's

dark tragedy into a gritty modern crime novel.

Why write a novel about a killer nanny?

Leyla Slamani in town for the Penn World Voices Festival talks about her pre-goncore winning

novel, The Perfect Nanny.

Alexander Alter will give us an update from the publishing world, plus our critics

Dwight Garner, Parle Sagole and Jen Celay will join us to talk about the latest in literary

criticism.

This is Inside the New York Times Book Review.

I'm Pamela Paul.

James Shapiro Shakespearean scholar joins us now to talk about his cover review of Joe

Nesbo's version of Macbeth.

Jim, thanks for being here.

Glad to be here.

All right, so this is part of an ongoing project by Hogarth to interpret Shakespeare's

plays through the novel.

What do you think of this idea?

I love it.

On principle, and I think everybody does, before they have to sit down and actually translate

these novels into contemporary fiction.

One reason that I love it is Shakespeare went to prose accounts and fictional accounts to

...