Call Me Ishmaelle

Call Me Ishmaelle

Fiction & Poetry, Modern & Contemporary Fiction | Hardback Published on: 20/03/2025
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Synopsis

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 Levy

1843. 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.

  • Publisher: Vintage Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781784745608
  • Number of pages: 448
  • Weight: 750g
  • Dimensions: 240 x 156 x 40 mm