_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._
Xiaolu Guo is an award-winning novelist of books including _Village of Stone_, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; _A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers_, shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and _I Am China_.
Her recent memoir, _Once Upon a Time in the East_, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018. It was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her most recent novel _A Lover's Discourse_ was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020.
_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.
_'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_