A year and a half ago, the novelist Jeanette Winterson got an irresistible offer from a publisher. The assignment: Choose any Shakespeare play she wanted, and adapt it into a novel.

“I said, ‘That would be great, put me down for “The Winter’s Tale,” ’ and they looked at me like I was insane,” Ms. Winterson recalled. “They said, ‘Do you really want to do that?’ And I said, ‘That’s the play, no question.’ ”

Ms. Winterson was one of the first writers to sign on for a project conceived by the publisher, Hogarth, which asked contemporary writers to reimagine Shakespeare’s plays. She more or less had her pick of the canon and could have chosen “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” “King Lear” or “Othello,” juicy dramas that were later snapped up by the novelists Gillian Flynn, Jo Nesbo, Edward St. Aubyn and Tracy Chevalier.

Instead, she surprised her publisher and picked “The Winter’s Tale,” one of Shakespeare’s most baffling, jarring and uneven plays. The opening acts build up to a tragic climax that leaves the king, Leontes, mourning the loss of his wife, son and infant daughter, who is abandoned in the wilderness on his orders. Then, after a memorable stage direction – “Exit, pursued by a bear” – and a 16-year gap, the play morphs into a wacky pastoral romp, with a statue that comes to life and one of the most awkward family reunions in all of literature.