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Cover of Dunbar (Hogarth Shakespeare)

Dunbar (Hogarth Shakespeare)

by Edward St. Aubyn

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A reimagining of one of Shakespeare's most well-read tragedies, by the contemporary, critically acclaimed master of domestic drama Henry Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global media corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage he hands over care of the corporation to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan, but as relations sour he starts to doubt the wisdom of past decisions. Now imprisoned in Meadowmeade, an upscale sanatorium in rural England, with only a demented alcoholic comedian as company, Dunbar starts planning his escape. As he flees into the hills, his family is hot on his heels. But who will find him first, his beloved youngest daughter, Florence, or the tigresses Abby and Megan, so keen to divest him of his estate?…

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"No one is better suited to adapting King Lear – Shakespeare’s most excruciating family tragedy – than Edward St. Aubyn, a writer whose career was built on familial strife with the exquisite Patrick Melrose novels. His language has a wonderful poetic density, dry, expansive, self-conscious and savage, all at once. The result is Dunbar, a moving, brutal and apt adaptation of the play, and the first really successful installment of the Hogarth Shakespeare series."
NPR Books We Love — 2017 · apps.npr.org