Call Me Ishmaelle

'Call Me Ishmaelle is 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

'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'

Philip Hoare

'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

A clever and original skewering of a classic

i

'Bold and fearless, playful and witty at the same time. ... an intensely satisfying and joyful read... resonates with Xiaolu’s longstanding themes of wanting to explore the world, challenge convention, be independent and break the rules.'

Bidisha

Guo gives renewed forms of life to Melville’s immense novel… [and] genuine innovation… Ishmaelle has her own story to tell, and a changing audience will want to listen

Times Literary Supplement

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

Guo’s narrative style is full of energy and Call Me Ishmaelle deftly incorporates philosophical questions about our relationship with nature and gender-dysphoria into the plot, constantly tugging at the heartstrings

New Statesman

[Guo’s] new book, a take on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, doesn’t disappoint… gripping

Literary Review

'It’s a propulsive, powerhouse of a read that doesn’t just stand on its own literary feet, it does so with such skill and verve that it might – just might – have you turning to its source material in a new light.'

Marie Claire

Call me Ishmaelle is a masterpiece...Reading it felt like receiving the most intimate of gifts

Margie Orford