“Leviathan or, The Whale” by Philip Hoare Wins Prestigious UK Book Award

"LEVIATHAN or, the whale" by Philip Hoare

It appears that a gentleman named Philip Hoare has capitalized on his lifelong obsession with whale and “Moby Dick” by winning a prestigious non-fiction book award in the UK. Another obvious option, of course, would be to create a web site about whales and Moby Dick that nobody ever reads.

“Leviathan or, The Whale” is Hoare’s account of a lifelong obsessions with whales that began with the work of Melville and the bones in natural history museums. The book and its author recently won the Samuel Johnson Prize (20,000 pounds) – a British non-fiction book award.

“What made Leviathan stand out in a shortlist of wonderful reads was Philip Hoare’s lifelong passion for his subject and his skill in making his readers share it,” said U.S. journalist Jacob Weisberg, chair of the judging panel. “His prose is dream-like and rises to the condition of literature.”

As far as I can tell the book hasn’t been released in the US yet, but I’m pretty sure there’s a way to track it down on the interwebs.

I actually don’t have sound on this computer (my pre-Nantucket base camp), but I’m going to embed this interview with Hoare anyways (in hopes that I remember to watch it later)