Leviathan
by Phillip Hoare (Fourth Estate)

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After Herman Melville published his book, Moby Dick, in 1851, no one saw whales in quite the same way again, having created a modern myth out of an already legendary beast. But what is the true nature of the whale? Why does it fascinate us?

In Leviathan, Phillip Hoare seeks to locate and identify his life-long obsession with whales. Why does the whale so vividly inhabit our imaginations? Is it a symbol of Edenic innocence in a time of threatened species and climate change? Or an older emblem of evil, the grotesque fish which swallowed Jonah? Travelling around the globe in search of the whale, Philip Hoare sheds light on our perennial fascination with the strange creatures of the sea, whose nature remains tantalizingly undiscovered.

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