Ishmael
An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
By Daniel Quinn
(Bantam, Paperback, 9780553375404, 272pp.)
Publication Date: May 1, 1995
Categories: Literary
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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?
Daniel Quinn's first book, Ishmael, won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, a prize for fiction presenting creative and positive solutions to global problems. He is also the author of Providence, The Story of B, and My Ishmael.
"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.
This book is on these lists:
Cal49's Wish List by Cal49Books I can't stop recommending by poliwogstu
My First List by paulson5683
Hellobecka's Wish List by hellobecka
Read in 2010 by KatieKlein
Too Read.... by tmthode
Occult and Magick Books by r.freeter
Staff Picks by dbdango
The Future And How to Make It by hyperlocavore
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