Since it was founded in 2020, the Litfest International Online Fiction Book Club has discussed more than 60 books with their authors, translators, editors and critics.

For this special edition we are delighted to welcome novelist and film-maker Xiaolu Guo. In her latest novel, Call Me Ishmaelle, she takes on the challenge of reimagining Moby Dick, Herman Melville’s 19th-century whaling classic – the tale of an epic battle between man and nature – from the perspective of a cross-dressing female sailor.

‘Ambitious, brave, and strange, from the imagination of this natural-born storyteller’ Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan

The Litfest International Fiction Book Club is convened by Bill Swainson (Litfest) and Sam O’Donoghue (School of Global Affairs, Lancaster University).

For more about the book club go to: litfest.org/international-fiction-book-club/

Xiaolu Guo is the author of A Lovers Discourse and Once Upon a Time in the East. Her films include the documentary We Went to Wonderland and the feature film, UFO in Her Eyes. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a visiting professor at the Free University in Berlin.

Litfest International Fiction Online Book Club – Xiaolu Guo: Call Me Ishmaelle