Killing Shakespeare by Koom Kankesan

In this wild young adult (YA) novel, three Scarborough, Ontario-based 21st century teenagers give new meaning to “a midsummer night’s dream.” Off they jet through time to Elizabethan England with a mission to knockoff the legacy of the English language’s greatest hits writer. Why? To make Grade Eleven a little bit easier, but boy are they in for a surprise. Will isn’t the nasty they imagine, and the1590s are a lot more fun – and weird – than they thought.

Off they jet through time to Elizabethan England with a mission to knockoff the legacy of the English language’s greatest hits writer. Why? To make Grade Eleven a little bit easier, but boy are they in for a surprise.

Nathan, Suresh, and Isabel must grow up fast after they accept the challenge offered by the stranger in their suburban playing field. Quickly, they decide they’ve made a mistake, but returning to a world of TikTok and flush toilets isn’t about to happen fast. They need to find a way to integrate into a world of mud roads and the Spanish Armada, while avoiding getting imprisoned in the Tower of London, or worse.

The future, they discover, has other plans for them – and the world. Events aren’t unfolding as they should, even as they find Shakespeare and influence revisions in the production of the initial performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to send signals through time. England is taking the initial steps towards its global empire, and these settler colonial kids want nothing to do with that. But how to make things right – and get home again?

Koom Kankesan has written a spirited novel full of high adventure and esoteric details. More than once, I turned to Google to learn more about dropped in details of Shakespeare’s era. What did happen to the Spanish Armada? Who was Walter Raleigh? When was the flush toilet invented? Did the water on earth come from outer space? Is the bottom line that Grade Eleven English teachers are cooler than you’d ever imagined possible? Surely, not, man. Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

Koom Kankesan has written a spirited novel full of high adventure and esoteric details. More than once, I turned to Google to learn more about dropped in details of Shakespeare’s era.

Killing Shakespeare is Kankesan’s fourth book. It’s rollicking fun.

Koom Kankesan is the author of The Panic Button, The Rajapaksa Stories, and The Tamil Dream. His other interests include film and comics, about which he writes in Comicon.com. He has interviewed comics practitioners for The Deconstructing Comics Podcast. He lives in Toronto.

Publisher: Mawenzi Press (June, 2024)
Paperback 5.5″ x 8.5″ | 272 pages
ISBN: 9781774151624

Michael Bryson

Michael Bryson has been reviewing books since the 1990s in publications such as The Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Paragraph Magazine, Id Magazine, and Quill & Quire. His short story collections include Thirteen Shades of Black and White (1999) and The Lizard and Other Stories (2009). His fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories and other anthologies. His story Survival is available as a Kindle single. From 1999-2018, he oversaw 78 issues of fiction, poetry, reviews, author interviews, essays, and other features at The Danforth Review. He lives in Scarborough, Ontario, and blogs at Art/Life: Scribblings.