Ishmael - by Daniel Quinn (Paperback)

About the Book

Now available in paperback for the first time, Ishmael is the winner of the Turner Tomorrow Award--a prize for fiction that offers solutions to global problems. When a man in search of truth answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious students, he finds himself alone in an abandoned office with a gorilla named Ishmael.

Book Synopsis

One of the most beloved and bestselling novels of spiritual adventure ever published, Ishmael has earned a passionate following. This special twenty-fifth anniversary edition features a new foreword and afterword by the author.

"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."--The New York Times Book Review

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. It is the story of a man who embarks on a highly provocative intellectual adventure with a gorilla--a journey of the mind and spirit that changes forever the way he sees the world and humankind's place in it.

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?

Explore Daniel Quinn's spiritual Ishmael trilogy:
ISHMAEL - MY ISHMAEL - THE STORY OF B

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

Review Quotes

"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."--The New York Times Book Review

"[Quinn entraps] 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

About the Author

Daniel Quinn grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and studied at St. Louis University, the University of Vienna, and Loyola University of Chicago. He worked in Chicago-area publishing for twenty years before beginning work on the book for which he is best known, Ishmael. In 1991, this book was chosen from among some 2,500 international entrants in the Turner Tomorrow competition to win the half-million dollar prize for a novel offering "creative and positive solutions to global problems." It has subsequently sold more than a million copies in English, is available in some thirty languages, and has been used in high schools and colleges worldwide in courses as varied as philosophy, geography, ecology, archaeology, history, biology, zoology, anthropology, political science, economics, and sociology. Subsequent works include Providence, The Story of B, My Ishmael: A Sequel, Beyond Civilization, After Dachau, The Holy, At Woomeroo, The Invisibility of Success, and The Teachings. Daniel Quinn died in 2018.