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Moby-Dick

Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Moby-Dick follows narrator Ishmael as he joins the crew of the whaleship Pequod, captained by the obsessed and vengeful Ahab. Their fateful pursuit of the eponymous white whale, which once maimed Ahab, unfolds amid strange, humorous, and profound episodes. The novel plunges into intricate knowledge about whales and the sea, capturing a tone that mixes both fun and fury while exploring the vast complexity of the world.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This classic novel is ideal for readers interested in profound literary works, maritime adventures, and explorations of obsession and nature. It appeals to those who appreciate richly detailed storytelling and a mixture of philosophy, science, and narrative drama.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

This edition of Herman Melville's monumental novel includes a new introduction that is attentive both to the rich literary history of Moby-Dick, and to the book's sharp relevance to issues of environmentalism, disability, power, race, and sexuality today.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

"It will be a strange sort of a book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you may get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree;β€”& to cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy.... Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this."

Moby-Dick has a monumental reputation. Less well known are the novel's unexpectedly weird, funny, tantalizing, messy, and wondrous moments. Narrator Ishmael, along with the whaleship Pequod's other "meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways", is beguiled into joining Captain Ahab in his vengeful pursuit of the white whale that "dismasted" him. But along the way, Ishmael takes the reader along many a detour into variegated ways of knowing.

In a tone "strangely compounded of fun and fury", Moby-Dick brings outlandish curiosity to bear on the multitudinous, oceanic scale of our diverse world.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780198853695

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 26 May 2022

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Oxford University Press

Edition: 2nd Revised edition

Contributors:

  • Edited by Hester Blum

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 24.0mm

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 196.0mm

Weight: 398g

Pages: 576

About the Author

Hester Blum is Professor of English at The Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of The View from the Masthead: Maritime Imagination and Antebellum American Sea Narratives (2008) and The News at the Ends of the Earth: The Print Culture of Polar Exploration (2019), as well as several edited volumes. Blum is past president of the Herman Melville Society, and her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She participated in the 38th Voyage of the Charles W. Morgan, the world's last surviving wooden whaleship and the sister ship to the Acushnet, in which Melville sailed.

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