"Hag-Seed" by Margaret Atwood

An audio book - a commissioned piece (part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project), based on The Tempest. Felix, 50, a theatre director is sacked when he's planning to put on The Tempest. He's escorted off the premises. His wife had died after childbirth. His daughter, Miranda died when 3 or so, 12 years in the past. He finds a hillside shed to live in.

After 9 years there of social exile, internet stalking, plotting revenge, and hoping to stage his Tempest (for Miranda's sake) he spends 3 years teaching Shakespeare to convicts. During the lessons only Shakespearian swearing is allowed - a running joke. They understand the villains well. When they perform, they're allowed to update the dialogue. When those who sacked him are coming to watch, he decides to stage The Tempest, hiring a woman to play Miranda. Felix will play Prospero, who magics a storm - part of the plan to escape the island. But what does the island represent?

He's being imagining Miranda growing up. Now he begins to hallucinate. The illegal skills of the cast (hacking, pickpocketing, drugs, etc) are brought into play to get incriminating evidence about the guests, who are planning to cut the funding. At their last lesson after the show the convicts have to say what the characters did after the play finished. That part goes on too long, but the rest is inventive and informs us about the play.

Other reviews

• Viv Groskop (The novel builds to a fantastic climax of dark calamity, with a wonderful footnote that sees the prisoner-actors analyse what they would want to happen next in The Tempest. There is so much exuberance and heart and wonder in this novel that the only thing I want to happen next is for Atwood to rewrite the whole of Shakespeare.)
• Gill Chedgey
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• girlwithherheadinabook (There are some fantastic instances of doubling with Hag-seed, with the character Miranda representing both the original play heroine, then the spirit of Felix’s lost daughter who he still imagines trailing in his wake all these years later but then also Anne-Marie, who takes on a surrogate-daughter relationship with Felix. The inmates have their own back-story but are then linked with the characters they portray onstage. And the students observe that Antonio in the play, and Tony in ‘real life’ have only prospered due to the inattention of Felix/Prospero, the one waxing in strength as the other waned. As a cast of incarcerated prisoners, Felix’s students are quick to spot that Prospero is a despot, to sympathise with Caliban, who is indeed the character who most of them want to play.)