Moby-Dick is the story of Captain Ahab`s quest to avenge the whale that `reaped` his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic.

But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab`s appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each.

Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel`s narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing. Expanding to equal his "mighty theme" - not only the whale but all things sublime - Melville breathes in the world`s great literature. Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written by an American.