Shylock Is My NameHOWARD JACOBSON (HOGARTH shakespeare, 288 PP, £16.99)Tablet bookshop price £15.30 • Tel 01420 592974 “The Merchant of Venice is the most troubling of Shakespeare’s plays for anyone,” Howard Jacobson has observed. “But, for an English novelist who happens to be Jewish, also the most challenging.”Never a man to shy away from nettles, he’s grasping this one as part of Hogarth’s new series of Shakespearean retellings. But rather than transposing the story to the here and now, as Jeanette Winterson did (with great vim) in her version of The Winter’s Tale, he’s taken key elements – think record producer sampling vinyl – and looped them over a parallel modern-day narrative.Confused? Don&rsq