Shylock Is My Name is the second novel to appear in Hogarth Press's Shakespeare Project. In this series, eight well-known novelists have each been commissioned to retell one of Shakespeare's plays for a modern audience. Jeanette Winterson launched the project with The Gap of  Time, her take on The Winter's Tale; the third in the series, the thoroughly enjoyable Vinegar Girl, a reworking of The Taming of the Shrew by Anne Tyler, was published in July. The brief for the project specifies a modern rendering of the plays, in much the same way that Shakespeare borrowed from Plutarch. This is in contrast with drawing on the plays as inspiration, in the manner, for example, of West Side Story.