Moby Dick

It took Herman Melville 17 months to complete the book. However, until Melville's death in 1891, Moby Dick brought him neither wealth nor literary fame. In the 20th century, its popularity skyrocketed. Along with Faulkner's The Bear and Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Moby Dick is known as one of the three great animal epics in American literature. The novel has been adapted or represented in art, film, books, cartoons, television shows, and more than a dozen versions in comic-book format.

The English writer D. H. Lawrence called Moby Dick "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world”. American songwriter Bob Dylan, when accepting the Nobel Prize of Literature in 2017, credited Moby-Dick as one of the three books that influenced him most. "That theme, and all that it implies, would work its way into more than a few of my songs."