If anyone could dare to think of rewriting the Macbeth of Shakespeare (with the perennial controversies about the complete original authorship of the English genius), it could not be other than Jo nesbo.
Only a prolific, multidisciplinary creator who became the greatest current reference point for crime novels (the evolved reference point comparable to the great classical tragedy) could undertake such work.
Perhaps the consideration of the black genre as the most adjusted to accommodate a new Macbeth sounds strange to you. But, if you think about it, Shakespeare's work oozes corruption, intrigue and death and that sum, today, what genre does it belong to?
With the necessary freedom of adaptation, Jo Nesbo turns Macbeth into a cop who commands an elite intervention group. The common note that underlies all the analogies between this current macbeth and the original one is ambition as the force capable of directing all the will towards that Machiavellian heritage from which Shakespeare himself also drank.
And so we enter the city and its underworld where black money and drugs move and where life itself can be part of any minimum agreement, fulfilled or not fulfilled.
That sinister orchestrated underworld, so necessary for the maintenance of the best social appearances, is directed by Hekate, whose unleashed ambition borders on the insane ideal of achieving everything, of ruling over the entire city.
Hekate believes that counting on Macbeth could deliver his final blow to execute a plan to kidnap all wills.
Macbeth is then in the muddy terrain of his miseries, driven with great difficulty between the anguished feeling of having no way out of evil.
An ambitious crime novel that demonstrates the great similarities between the sinister scenarios of human civilization centuries ago and the most rabid today.
You can now buy the novel Macbeth, Jo Nesbo's new book, here: