I must work on a ship as a man . . . Yes, I must seek a new life, more adventurous than that of my fellows on this desolate salt marsh. I must find freedom on the seas.

One of the most acclaimed Chinese-born writers of her generation, Xiaolu Guo is the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Nine Continents and a Granta Best Young British Novelist. In Call Me Ishmaelle, Guo turns Herman Melville’s masterpiece on its head with a modern feminist,  diasporic sensibility.

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. Years later, as the American Civil War breaks out, 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 amidst the bloody male violence of whaling and discovers a mysterious bond between herself and the white whale who claimed Seneca’s leg.

Built on the bones of Melville’s classic, Call Me Ishmaelle is a dynamic new tale, imbued with a diverse, swashbuckling crew—from a Polynesian harpooner to a Taoist Monk—and a powerful exploration of human nature, gender, man’s place among the animals, and the nature of home.

Praise for Call Me Ishmaelle:

“A brilliantly written reordering of Moby-Dick, ambitious, brave, and strange, from the imagination of this natural-born storyteller. There’s a cinematic, global sweep to its motion, and an unbridled energy and poetry to its dramatic words. The result is as animal and visceral and shape-shifting and subversive as the broad back of the mythic whale themselves.”—Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan 

“A glorious female-led retelling of a classic, combining seafaring adventure with beautifully immersive prose. Exploring gender identity, race and our relationship to the natural world, Xiaolu Guo reinvigorates Herman Melville’s story while staying true to its heart.”—Carmella Lowkis, author of Spitting Gold

“From the bones of Melville’s Great White Whale, Xiaolu Guo has fashioned a novel as wonderful, captivating and sea-soaked, that’s seems both timeless and very much of today.”—Travis Elborough, author of Atlas of Forgotten Places 

Praise for Xiaolu Guo:

“[Guo is] an astute and challenging innovator, slipping between word and image, documentary and fiction, as restlessly as between languages.”—Guardian, on A Lover’s Discourse

“Xiaolu Guo’s literary voice remains a breath of the freshest air imaginable.”—The Independent (UK), on A Lover’s Discourse 

“Vivid—and funny.”—Wall Street Journal, on Nine Continents

“Guo writes in the audacious, restless and fragmented prose that has become her imprint: a feverish style that can be as merciless as the world she portrays . . . [A] penetrating writer.”—New Statesman (UK), on Nine Continents 

“When it comes to spinning light and shadow on the complexities of living, loving and language, Xiaolu Guo is one of the most valuable writers in the world.”—Deborah Levy, on Radical