Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ishmael | 1992 | Daniel Quinn | Buy |
| 2 | Self-Raised | 1876 | Daniel Quinn | N/A |
| 3 | The Story of B | 1996 | Daniel Quinn | Buy |
| 4 | My Ishmael | 1997 | Daniel Quinn | Buy |
Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael trilogy begins with the 1992 novel that won the $500,000 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award, beating out 2,500 other entries. The book introduces a gorilla named Ishmael who, through a series of Socratic dialogues with an unnamed narrator, picks apart the assumptions behind industrial civilization and its effects on the planet. It became a hit on college campuses and reading lists worldwide, selling more than a million copies and earning translations into about thirty languages.
The Story of B (1996) shifts the setting to Europe and follows a Laurentian priest named Jared Osborne, sent by his order to investigate a man known only as “B” whose public lectures echo Ishmael’s teachings. My Ishmael (1997) revisits the gorilla himself, this time with a twelve-year-old student named Julie Gerchak who answers his newspaper ad. Julie’s youth allows Quinn to reframe and extend the original book’s arguments, particularly around schooling and the way children are shaped by the culture they inherit.