London Review Bookshop Podcast

Xiaolu Guo & Philip Hoare: Call Me Ishmaelle

Oct 29, 2025
Xiaolu Guo, an acclaimed novelist and filmmaker, discusses her latest work, *Call Me Ishmaelle*, a feminist reimagining of Moby-Dick. Joining her is Philip Hoare, a writer renowned for his insights into maritime literature. They explore Guo's childhood in a South China fishing village and how it shaped her perspective. Guo reinterprets Ishmael as a female figure and transforms Ahab into a black captain, reflecting on race and identity. Themes of displacement and a reverse artistic journey illuminate her narrative, while Darwin's influence is woven throughout.
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INSIGHT

Politics Shapes Literary Reimagining

  • Xiaolu Guo felt driven to Melville because American political realities in Trump-era New York reshaped how she read literature.
  • That geopolitical context pushed her to re-examine identity, exile, and literary belonging through Moby Dick.
ANECDOTE

Childhood In A Fishing Village

  • Xiaolu described her childhood in a poor fishing village near the Taiwan Channel and showed a photograph her father took.
  • The village's atmosphere of death and her father's paintings shaped her emotional gravity and later writing.
INSIGHT

Recasting Ishmael As English

  • Guo decided her Ishmael would be an English girl, not American, which forced her back into pre-Victorian English literature.
  • Re-rooting Ishmael in England reshaped voice, period research, and the novel's cultural frame.
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