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by Guo, Xiaolu

Call Me Ishmaelle

£18.99

Author: Guo, Xiaolu

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 20 March 2025 by Vintage Publishing (Chatto & Windus) in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 448 pages
242 x 164 x 40 | 666g

Moby-Dick reimagined from the perspective of a cross-dressed female sailor’Brilliantly written… ambitious, brave, strange’ Philip Hoare’One of the most valuable writers in the world’ Deborah Levy1843. Ishmaelle is born in a small village on the stormy Kent coast where she grows up swimming with dolphins. After her parents and infant sister die, her brother, Joseph, leaves to find work as a sailor. Abandoned and desperate for a life at sea, Ishmaelle disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York.

Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick from a female perspective. As the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, Ishmaelle boards the Nimrod, a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors in Polynesian harpooner, Kauri, and Taoist monk, Muzi, whose readings of the I-Ching guide their quest.

Through the bloody male violence of whaling, and the unveiling of her feminine identity, Ishmaelle realises there is a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale, Moby Dick. Xiaolu Guo has crafted a dramatically different, feminist narrative that stands alongside the original while offering a powerful exploration of nature, gender and human purpose.

SKU: '9781784745608 Category:

Additional information

Weight0.666 kg
Dimensions24.2 × 16.4 × 4 cm