We are happy to announce that writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo will be appearing at The Broadway Bookshop on Thursday 30th April 2026 to celebrate the paperback edition of her latest work of fiction, Call Me Ishmaelle, published by Vintage. Xiaolu will be reading from and talking about her new novel (described by Philip Hoare as a ‘brilliantly written reordering of Moby-Dick‘) and joined in conversation by Jane Howe, the founder of the bookshop and a longtime reader and supporter of Xiaolu’s extraordinary body of work.

Signed copies of Call Me Ishmaelle, alongside a selection of Xiaolu’s other books, will be available to purchase.

Entry is FREE but spaces are limited. RSVP: books@broadwaybookshophackney.com

We hope you can join us!

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Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo (Vintage, March 2026)

Moby-Dick reimagined from the perspective of a cross-dressed female sailor

‘Brilliantly written… ambitious, brave, strange’ —Philip Hoare

‘One of the most valuable writers in the world’ —Deborah Levy

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. Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick from a female perspective.

As the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, Ishmaelle boards the Nimrod, a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors in Polynesian harpooner, Kauri, and Taoist monk, Muzi, whose readings of the I-Ching guide their quest. Through the bloody male violence of whaling, and the unveiling of her feminine identity, Ishmaelle realises there is a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale, Moby Dick.

Xiaolu Guo has crafted a dramatically different, feminist narrative that stands alongside the original while offering a powerful exploration of nature, gender and human purpose.

Order your copy of Call Me Ishmaelle >

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Xiaolu Guo is a novelist, memoirist and filmmaker. Her books include: Village of Stone, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth. Her memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018. Her novel A Lover’s Discourse was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. Radical: A Life of My Own was published in 2023 and was followed in 2024 by My Battle of Hastings: Chronicle of a Year by the Sea. Xiaolu has directed a dozen films, including How Is Your Fish Today (Sundance Official Selection) and She, a Chinese, which received the Golden Leopard Award at the 2009 Locarno Film Festival. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was named as a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013. Call Me Ishmaelle is her latest book. Everyday Tang: On What We Can Learn From a Dynasty is forthcoming from Notting Hill Editions this September.

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