AN OBSESSIVE TALE ABOUT WHALES IS WILLIAM HILL’S 2/1 FAVOURITE FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE

After Herman Melville published his book, Moby Dick, in 1851, no one saw whales in quite the same way again. But what is the true nature of the whale? Why does it fascinate us? In Leviathan, Phillip Hoare seeks to locate and identify his life-long obsession with whales. Why does the whale so vividly inhabit our imaginations? Travelling around the globe in search of the whale, Philip Hoare sheds light on our fascination with the strange creatures of the sea, whose nature remains tantalisingly undiscovered.

“Hoare's personal pilgrimage, wandering, reflective, frequently very personal, owes much to WG Sebald, including the device of peppering the text with black and white pictures. Whales have a very intimate and troubled relationship to man, one which this elegiac book does much to illuminate.” Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

WILLIAM HILL’S ODDS FOR THE BBC SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE SHORTLIST
2/1 Leviathan by Phillip Hoare
3/1 The Lost City of Z by David Grann
4/1 Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
9/2 Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed
5/1 The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
6/1 Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar

The judges will announce the winner of the prize at an awards ceremony at King’s Place, London on 30 June.

http://www.thesamueljohnsonprize.co.uk/

To read The Observer review of Leviathan link here.