Call Me Ishmaelle

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