Moby-Dick
Penguin Classics · first published 1851 · 720 pages
A sailor signs onto a whaling ship whose captain is set on hunting down one white whale.
The story keeps stepping aside into chapters on whales, rope and the sea, and the digressions become part of its strange rhythm.
For a night when the sea feels near.
About this book
Ishmael, restless on land, goes to sea on the Pequod out of Nantucket, befriending the harpooner Queequeg along the way. Once they are at sea, Captain Ahab reveals that the voyage has one real purpose: to find the whale that took his leg. The book moves between adventure, sermon, natural history and stage drama, mixing comedy with dread. What remains is the sense of a whole crew bound to one man's obsession.