Following the success of Ishmael, Quinn wrote two other philosophical novels about anthropology and the environment: The Story of B (1996), and My Ishmael (1997).

Ishmael won Quinn the prestigious Turner Award, organized by the media billionaire Ted Turner. Quinn’s breakthrough came in 1991, when he wrote his best-known novel, the philosophical dialogue Ishmael. He didn’t write a novel of his own until 1988-this novel, Dreamer, was a work of science fiction, and while it earned fairly positive reviews, it didn’t sell well. Following his departure from Kentucky, Quinn moved to New York and worked in publishing for many years. Quinn fell out with his mentors at the abbey-a falling out that contributed to his abandonment of Catholicism altogether in the mid-1960s. Afterwards, he studied at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, in the hopes of becoming a monk. He later studied at a variety of universities, including Saint Louis University, where he earned a B.A. “Arthur Koestler, in an essay in which he wondered whether mankind would go the way of the dinosaur, formulated what he called the Dinosaur’s Prayer: ‘Lord, a little more time!’ Ishmael does its bit to answer that prayer and may just possibly have bought us all a little more time.Daniel Quinn was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and was raised Catholic. We want to change our lives.” - The Washington Post we’re in grip, we want Ishmael to teach us how to save the planet from ourselves.

“Before we’re halfway through this slim book. “As suspenseful, inventive, and socially urgent as any fiction or nonfiction you are likely to read this or any other year.” - The Austin Chronicle In Ishmael, which received the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship for the best work of fiction offering positive solutions to global problems, Daniel Quinn parses humanity’s origins and its relationship with nature, in search of an answer to this challenging question: How can we save the world from ourselves?Įxplore Daniel Quinn’s spiritual Ishmael trilogy: It is the story of a man who embarks on a highly provocative intellectual adventure with a gorilla-a journey of the mind and spirit that changes forever the way he sees the world and humankind’s place in it. So begins an utterly unique and captivating novel. It was just a three-line ad in the personals section, but it launched the adventure of a lifetime. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. laid out for us with an originality and a clarity that few would deny.”- The New York Times Book Review

“A thoughtful, fearlessly low-key novel about the role of our species on the planet. This special twenty-fifth anniversary edition features a new foreword and afterword by the author.

One of the most beloved and bestselling novels of spiritual adventure ever published, Ishmael has earned a passionate following.

Daniel quinn books