The author and film-maker on why she was inspired to reimagine Moby-Dick in her new novel, her love of Coleridge and returning to the ‘addictive power of fiction’

Xiaolu Guo, 52, was born in China and lives in London. The author of more than 20 books in a variety of genres in Chinese and English, she’s also a film director whose awards include the Golden Leopard at the Locarno film festival, previously won by Claire Denis and Jim Jarmusch. This month she publishes two books: the paperback of her 2024 memoir, My Battle of Hastings: Chronicle of a Year By the Sea, and a new novel, Call Me Ishmaelle, a retelling of Moby-Dick

What led you to take on Herman Melville’s 1851 classic?
I was in New York, a foreigner walking around for a year while teaching at Columbia and writing my memoir, Radical [2023], and this was a parallel project, a philosophical experiment. Most people are Asiatic – the world’s population is 60% Asian – and with each novel I write, I ask myself in what ways a non-westerner from a non-biblical background can engage in dialogue with the western literary canon. The word “Christendom” appears repeatedly in Moby-Dick. I wondered: what if people never knew what that is? If it said “Taoism” instead, would you still listen to the story? I’m a guerrilla gardener – I secretly go out planting trees in my neighbourhood – and it made me think: can I somehow just bring ancient east Asian philosophy into this American landscape? Guerrilla sabotage. I wanted the whole world on that ship. I spent so much time figuring out how to get a black captain from the civil war period into dialogue with a Chinese Taoist sailmaker.