Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0553106368, Hardcover)

Daniel Quinn's Ishmael was the winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, a prize honoring fiction that offers creative and positive solutions to global problems.  This extraordinary novel has become an underground bestseller and a testament for a burgeoning spiritual movement.  Mr. Quinn's new novel is a companion piece--not a story that follows the first but rather a story contemporaneous with the first.  In it, the Ishmael saga takes a startling direction that is in no way prefigured in the original.


The gorilla licked his lips--nervously, it seemed to me.  "I think we can safely say that I'm not prepared to deal with the needs of a person your age.  I think that can be safely said.  Yes."

"You mean you give up.  Is that what you're telling me? You want me to go away because you give up.  Don't you think a twelve-year-old girl can have an earnest desire to save the world?"

"I don't doubt it," he said, though the words sounded like they were pretty hard to get out.

"Then why won't you talk to me? Your ad in the paper said you need a pupil.  Isn't that what it said?"

"That's what it said."

"Well, you've got one.  Here I am."


With these words we meet Julie Gerchak, one of the most engaging young heroes since Huckleberry Finn--and one of Ishmael's most challenging and rewarding disciples.  Unable to justify turning her away, Ishmael accepts the daunting task of juggling two pupils of widely differing characters--one of whom (Julie) insists on remaining unknown to the other (Alan Lomax, known to the readers of Ishmael as the narrator of that book).  Julie is unquestionably bright (quite possibly brighter than Alan), but she's also shy of his educational background by ten years!  This means Ishmael can by no means follow the same strategy with each--or expect the same outcome from each.  Alan and Julie don't just take different routes with their simian mentor, they end up in very different places.

But something else distinguishes Ishmael's relationship with Julie.  When the infrastructure of his life begins to crumble, Ishmael must choose one of his students to entrust with a great secret and a great mission.  And, surprisingly, his choice falls not on the older, more experienced student but on the younger one.  In revealing the mission and the secret entrusted to her, Julie pens a conclusion to the Ishmael saga that will raise cheers from his fans all around the world.

Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0553379658, Paperback)

Winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, Daniel Quinn's Ishmael is a bestseller and a testament for a burgeoning spiritual movement.  Now Quinn presents an extraordinary sequel, a companion novel so startlingly original that even Ishmael's most faithful readers will not predict its outcome....

When Ishmael places an advertisement for pupils with "an earnest desire to save the world," he does not expect a child to answer him.  But twelve-year-old Julie Gerchak is undaunted by Ishmael's reluctance to teach someone so young, and convinces him to take her on as his next student.  Ishmael knows he can't apply the same strategies with Julie that he used with his first pupil, Alan Lomax--nor can he hope for the same outcome.  But young Julie proves that she is ready to forge her own spiritual path--and arrive at her own destination.  And when the time comes to choose a pupil to carry out his greatest mission yet, Ishmael makes a daring decision--a choice that just might change the world.

Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0553375407, Paperback)

The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man  in search for truth. He answers an ad in a local  newspaper from a teacher looking for serious  pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned  office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling  delicately on a slender branch. "You are the  teacher?" he asks incredulously. "I am  the teacher," the gorilla replies. Ishmael is  a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story  to tell, one that no other human being has ever  heard. It is a story that extends backward and  forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth  of time to a future there is still time save.  Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the  lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to  come from within ourselves. Is it man's destiny  to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny  possible for him-- one more wonderful than he has ever  imagined?