Leviathan: Or The Whale

The story of a man’s obsession with whales, which takes him on a personal, historical and biographical journey – from his childhood to his fascination with Moby-Dick and his excursions whale-watching. All his life, Philip Hoare has been obsessed by whales, from the gigantic skeletons in London’s Natural History Museum to adult encounters with the wild animals themselves. Whales have a mythical quality – they seem to elide with dark fantasies of sea-serpents and antediluvian monsters that swim in our collective unconscious. In ‘Leviathan’, Philip Hoare seeks to locate and identify this obsession. What impelled Melville to write ‘Moby-Dick’? After his book in 1851, no one saw whales in quite the same way again. This book is an investigation into what we know little about – dark, shadowy creatures who swim below the depths, only to surface in a spray of spume. More than the story of the whale, it is also the story of our own obsessions. In Leviathan, Hoare's obsession with whales takes us on a journey that is both personal and universal, making it a top pick for readers. His narrative is a best-in-class exploration of the human psyche, using his fascination with whales as a metaphor for our own obsessions. For fans of Seán Hewitt (All Down Darkness Wide), Oliver Soden (Jeoffry), Julia Rothman (How We Got By), Robert Macfarlane (Is a River Alive?), and Dan Flores (Wild New World).