Ishmael:A Novel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553375407 ISBN 13: 9780553375404

Publisher: Bantam, 1995

One of the most beloved and bestselling novels of spiritual adventure ever published, Ishmael has earned a passionate following among readers and critics alike. This special twenty-fifth anniversary edition features a new foreword and afterword by the author, as well as an excerpt from My Ishmael.

TEACHER SEEKS PUPIL.
Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.

It was just a three-line ad in the personals section, but it launched the adventure of a lifetime.

So begins an utterly unique and captivating novel. In Ishmael, which received the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship for the best work of fiction offering positive solutions to global problems, Daniel Quinn parses humanity’s origins and its relationship with nature, in search of an answer to this challenging question: How can we save the world from ourselves?
 
Praise for Ishmael

“As suspenseful, inventive, and socially urgent as any fiction or nonfiction you are likely to read this or any other year.”—The Austin Chronicle

“Before we’re halfway through this slim book . . . we’re in [Daniel Quinn’s] grip, we want Ishmael to teach us how to save the planet from ourselves. We want to change our lives.”—The Washington Post

“Arthur Koestler, in an essay in which he wondered whether mankind would go the way of the dinosaur, formulated what he called the Dinosaur’s Prayer: ‘Lord, a little more time!’ Ishmael does its bit to answer that prayer and may just possibly have bought us all a little more time.”—Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher:

"The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man in search for truth. He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch. "You are the teacher?" he asks incredulously. "I am the teacher," the gorilla replies. Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story to tell, one that no other human being has ever heard. It is a story that extends backward and forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth of time to a future there is still time save. Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to come from within ourselves. Is it man's destiny to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny possible for him-- one more wonderful than he has ever imagined?

"A thoughtful, fearlessly low-key novel about the role of our species on the planet...laid out for us with an originality and a clarity that few would deny." -- New York Times Book Review.

"[Quinn] entrap[s] us in the dialogue itself, in the sweet and terrible lucidity of Ishmael's analysis of the human condition...it was surely for this deep, clear persuasiveness of argument that Ishmael was given its huge prize." -- The Washington Post

"It is as suspenseful, inventive, and socially urgent as any fiction or nonfiction book you are likely to read this or any other year" -- The Austin Chronicle.

"Deserves high marks as a serious -- and all too rare -- effort that is unflinchingly engaged with fundamental life-and-death concerns." -- The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

From the Back Cover:

"A thoughtful, fearlessly low-key novel about the role of our species on the planet...laid out for us with an originality and a clarity that few would deny." -- New York Times Book Review.

"[Quinn] entrap[s] us in the dialogue itself, in the sweet and terrible lucidity of Ishmael's analysis of the human condition...it was surely for this deep, clear persuasiveness of argument that Ishmael was given its huge prize." -- The Washington Post

"It is as suspenseful, inventive, and socially urgent as any fiction or nonfiction book you are likely to read this or any other year" -- The Austin Chronicle.

"Deserves high marks as a serious -- and all too rare -- effort that is unflinchingly engaged with fundamental life-and-death concerns." -- The Atlanta Journal Constitution.