The Second Death of Hamlet

This is a masterfully-written collection of fourteen short and longer fictions focused on the lives of an assortment of powerful figures from history and literature: Shakespeare, Hitler, Captain Ahab, Crusoe, Hamlet, David Hume, and Judas Iscariot - larger-than-life figures, both heroic and diabolic, looming so large in the contemporary imagination that mere reality cannot contain them. Each story deftly blends thought and feeling, life and allegory, and madness and sanity - telling the 'other' lives of these familiar characters in sometimes imaginary settings, ranging from the west of Ireland to Venice, from 16th-Century China to ancient Judaea, and from Rome to pre-war Vienna.