Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel's narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader.

Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing.

Expanding to equal his ‘mighty theme’ – not only the whale but all things sublime – Melville breathes in the world's great literature.

Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written by an American.