Ahab And The White Whale
by Manuel Marsol & Chloe Garcia Roberts (translator)
AUCK IN STOCK
WGTN OUT OF STOCK
40
May 2026
Hardback
New York Review of Books, Incorporated, The
NYR Children's Collection
9798896230052
Ahab's beautifully illustrated, off-kilter adventure on the high seas offers an important lesson on obsession and staying true to yourself.
On the island of Nantucket lives the greatest whaling captain of all time. Call him Ahab. He has long searched for the great white whale known as Moby Dick. Whenever Ahab heard any news of the whale, he rushed off to sea in his ship the Pequod. He climbed mountains, scaled sunken wrecks, crossed oceans without any luck. He wasted whole days shut up in his cabin. He traveled to the ends of the earth, but still the whale was not to be found. Ahab spent so much time on the hunt that he even forgot what he was looking for! The sea is a mystery, that much he can say for sure.
In this exquisitely illustrated story inspired by Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Manuel Marsol turns Captain Ahab into a sympathetic, driven goofball with valuable lessons to impart about life, leviathans, and not letting our goals obscure the world right in front of our eyes.
The illustrations alone are worth the price of this beautiful picture book retelling of Moby Dick. Manuel Marsol delivers a wonderfully simple story of Ahab’s obsessive search for the giant white whale. Told in his own words Ahab comes across as sympathetic but somewhat of a fool, so blinded by his odyssey that he can’t see what is immediately in front of him. The textural nature of the illustrations reveals all the mysteries of the sea, the line between the imagined and the real constantly shifting. Ahab becomes lost and when he finally arrives back home long after he began his journey, he can’t even remember what he was searching for.
Roger, Little Unity
