'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 Hoare
Call 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
Kingsolver In 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
