Moby-Dick
A whaling voyage, an encyclopedia of whales, and a captain who has decided the ocean owes him an answer.
Ishmael signs onto a Nantucket whaler and finds its captain has no interest in oil. Ahab wants the white whale that took his leg, and will spend ship, crew and his own life getting to it. Melville interrupts the chase with chapters on cetology, rope, whiteness and the law of salvage, which is why the book failed in 1851 and why it later became inexhaustible. It is an adventure novel that keeps stopping to ask what anything means.
Recommended by 1 Person
Colum McCann
It's an exploration into the depths of human consciousness; we all eventually become Ishmael in the hope to survive.
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