Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

About this book

Herman Melville's 1851 novel opens as the sailor Ishmael signs aboard the whaler Pequod out of Nantucket. Its captain, Ahab, is consumed by the hunt for the white whale that took his leg. Around that pursuit Melville builds a vast book: adventure and shipboard life, but also long chapters on whales, work, myth and belief. Narrated by Ishmael and ranging from comedy to sermon, it was a commercial failure in its time and is now read as a central work of American literature.