Moby Dick

by Herman Melville

Moby Dick by Herman Melville is a story of a sea captains’s obsessive pursuit of revenge against the whale that had taken his leg.

Recommendations from our site

“I actually have quite an idiosyncratic reading of this great metaphysical masterpiece.” Read more...

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Rebecca Goldstein, Philosopher

“It’s an extraordinary novel in all sorts of ways, and the scale of it reflects the scale of the sea.” Read more...

The best books on The Sea

Philip Marsden, Novelist

“Through the whale, as I see it now, we feel the power of the relationship between man and nature, exposing man’s urge to control the natural world.” Read more...

The best books on Saving the World

Jonathon Porritt, Environmentalist

“Evil derives from the violent avoidance of the realisation of our own mortality and there could be few better examples of this in literature than Melville’s portrait of Ahab in Moby-Dick.” Read more...

The best books on Evil

Adam Haslett, Novelist