Herman Melville

1797. Den franske revolusjonen har forårsaket en voldelig brytningstid i hele Europa. Som konservativ stormakt har England et umettelig behov for soldater, og tjueen år gamle Billy Budd tvangsverves som fortoppsgast på et krigsskip i den britiske middelhavsflåten. Hans karisma gjør ham populær blant gastene, men våpenmesteren Claggart tar av mystiske grunner anstøt av ham, og anklager ham for å konspirere mot befalet. Spithead og Nore-mytteriene har gjort britiske offiserer, deriblant kommandør Vere på H. M. S. Bellipotent, smertelig klare over at også eget mannskap kan utgjøre en trussel mot gamle autoriteter. Herman Melvilles siste gåtefulle og dramatiske fortelling ble funnet blant hans etterlatte papirer, og bidro til at den store forfatteren av Moby Dick ble omfavnet av moderne lesere. Thomas Mann kalte Billy Budd, sjømann " "den vakreste historien i verden" ". Albert Camus kalte den " "en plettfri historie vi kan vurdere på linje med visse greske tragedier" ".

"Benito Cereno" contains some of Herman Melville's most vivid action writing, though the action is all suspense and premonition until the climax. Why this story hasn't been more widely acclaimed remains a mystery, as it captures the imagination of a 'young reader' in a tighter grip than Billy Budd. Joseph Conrad's famous story of the Congo was written decades after Melville's story of a mutiny, and it's extremely unlikely that Conrad was thinking of Benito Cereno when he wrote Heart of Darkness, but the two extended stories have a lot in common: scenes of human depravity, ambiguities about good and evil, nightmarish descriptions, an atmosphere of suspended horror. More historically-informed readers will surely guess the mystery of Captain Cereno's behavior on his ghastly ship long before the good-natured American Captain Delano. Readers of Melville's era, recalling the news of the ship Amistad, would have guessed even quicker and more certainly. In fact, the tension between the reader's aroused suspicions and the benevolent opacity of Captain Delano is at the core of the reading experience. The 'Good' seldom have much insight into the "Wicked". But wait, don't rush to judgment about wickedness when you read Herman Melville Is mutiny a greater wickedness than slavery, and is violence in the act of self-liberation less or more justified than violence in defense of property? And is Captain Delano's good-natured racism, based on his assumption that blacks are docile and unintelligent, not the basis for his nearly disastrous lack of acumen? Babo, the ringleader of the mutiny, may be a horrid beast in Delano's mind but he's surely the smartest Homo sapiens on the scene, a representation that can't have been unintended by Melville. Apparently Melville used the memoirs of a real Captain Amasa Delano as the inspiration for this spine-tingling story of terror on a becalmed sailing ship. The denouement of the tale is told in the form of court depositions, lending a journalistic credibility to the narrative. Though some critics have found that structure disjointed and anticlimactic, even if that were so, the larger part of the novella is every bit as spooky as Conrad's masterpiece.

Few things, even in literature, can really be said to be unique - but Moby Dick is truly unlike anything written before or since. The novel is nominally about the obsessive hunt by the crazed Captain Ahab of the book's eponymous white whale. But interspersed in that story are digressions, paradoxes, philosophical riffs on whaling and life, and a display of techniques so advanced for its time that some have referred to the 1851 Moby Dick as the first "modern" novel.

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. In Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab is an eerily compelling madman who focuses his distilled hatred and suffering (and that of generations before him) into the pursuit of a creature as vast, dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. More than just a novel of adventure, this is a haunting social commentary populated with some of the most enduring characters in literature. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby Dick is a profound and timeless inquiry into character, faith and the nature of perception.

"Call me Ishmael" is the iconic opening line of Herman Melville's classic American novel, "Moby-Dick." Ishmael is a seaman aboard the whaling vessel, "Pequod, " under the vengeful captain, Ahab. Maniacally seeking retribution from the great white sperm whale called Moby-Dick -- the whale responsible for the captain's missing leg -- Ahab leads the crew on a quest to kill the infamous beast. A fictional work based on actual events, "Moby-Dick" is a classic that has been enjoyed for generations and is now available as part of the "Word Cloud Classic series, " making it a stylish and affordable addition to any library.

From A to Z, the Penguin Drop Caps series collects 26 unique hardcovers--featuring cover art by Jessica Hische It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, the series features unique cover art by Hische, a superstar in the world of type design and illustration, whose work has appeared everywhere from Tiffany & Co. to Wes Anderson's recent film Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin's own bestsellers Committed and Rules of Civility. With exclusive designs that have never before appeared on Hische's hugely popular Daily Drop Cap blog, the Penguin Drop Caps series debuted with an 'A' for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, a 'B' for Charlotte Br nte's Jane Eyre, and a 'C' for Willa Cather's My ntonia. It continues with more perennial classics, perfect to give as elegant gifts or to showcase on your own shelves. M is for Melville, who wrote of his masterpiece, "It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it." In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopedia of whaling lore and legend, Moby-Dick is a haunting, mesmerizing, and important social commentary populated with several of the most unforgettable and enduring characters in literature. Written with wonderfully redemptive humor, Moby-Dick is a profound and timeless inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.

Herman Melville's thrilling nautical adventure—a timeless allegory and an epic saga of heroic determination and conflict. At the heart of Moby-Dick is the powerful, unknowable sea—and Captain Ahab, a brooding, one-legged fanatic who has sworn vengeance on the mammoth white whale that crippled him. Narrated by Ishmael, a wayfarer who joins the crew of Ahab’s whaling ship, this is the story of that hair-raising voyage, and of the men who embraced hardship and nameless horrors as they dared to challenge God’s most dreaded creation and death itself for a chance at immortality. A novel that delves with astonishing vigor into the complex souls of men, Moby-Dick is an impassioned drama of the ultimate human struggle that the Atlantic Monthly called “the greatest of American novels.” With an Introduction by Elizabeth Renker and an Afterword by Christopher Buckley