Call Me Ishmaelle

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Author: Guo, Xiaolu Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)Published on 19 March 2026 by Vintage Publishing (Vintage) in the United Kingdom.Paperback | 448 pages197 x 129 x 29 | 306g ‘A smart gender-flipped version of Moby Dick’ Daily Telegraph‘A clever and original skewering of a classic’ i News‘A brilliantly written reordering of Moby-Dick’ Philip HoareCall Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick from a female perspective – perfect for fans Madeline Miller, Percival Everett and Barbara KingsolverIn 1843, in a small village on the stormy Kent coast, Ishmaelle is born. She grows up swimming with dolphins and eventually – desperate for a life at sea – she disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York.As the American Civil War breaks out, Ishmaelle boards 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 amidst the bloody male violence of whaling and discovers a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale Moby Dick…‘One of the most valuable writers in the world’ Deborah Levy‘Guo has gender-flipped this intimidating text with bravura and style… Call Me Ishmaelle takes us on a courageous journey: it’s no aping of a classic, rather a vision of a young woman sailing out to discover not a whale but her own self. And in that, it happily succeeds’ Daily Telegraph‘An astonishingly ambitious undertaking . . . you’re in the hands of a genuine storyteller’ New York Times Book Review Show more