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MEET THE BÀRD: Xiaolu Guo
Tue, Mar 17
|Bàrd Books
Join Xiaolu + Barry in conversation to discuss her feminist telling of 'Moby Dick'
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Time & Location
Mar 17, 2026, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Bàrd Books, 341-343 Roman Rd, Bow, London E3 5QR, UK
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About the event
CALL ME ISHMAELLE by Xiaolu Guo
'An astonishingly ambitious undertaking . . . you're in the hands of a genuine storyteller' [New York Times Book Review]
Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville's Moby Dick from a female perspective.
'A brilliantly written reordering of Moby-Dick, ambitious, brave, and strange, from the imagination of this natural-born storyteller. There's a cinematic, global sweep to its motion, and an unbridled energy and poetry to its dramatic words' [Philip Hoare]
1843. Ishmaelle is born in a small village on the stormy Kent coast where she grows up swimming with dolphins. After her parents and infant sister die, her brother, Joseph, leaves to find work as a sailor. Abandoned and desperate for a life at sea, Ishmaelle disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York.
As the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, Ishmaelle boards…
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