Moby-Dick
Read Moby-Dick by Herman Melville in German and English, a parallel text graded reader with audio. Available in CEFR levels A2, B1, B2, and C2.
About this book
"Call me Ishmael." With those three words, a melancholy wanderer takes to the sea to cure his spleen, and the book follows him from a dilapidated New Bedford inn to the deck of a Nantucket whaler. At the Spouter-Inn he is made to share a bed with an absent harpooneer, and when the tattooed cannibal Queequeg finally climbs in beside him with a lit tomahawk-pipe, fear gives way to something rarer. The two become bosom friends, forehead to forehead, sworn to die for one another. "Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian," Ishmael decides, and the reversal, delivered without a shred of preaching, sets the book's moral compass early.
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Nennt mich Ismael.
Call me Ishmael.
Vor einigen Jahren – ich sage nicht genau, wie lange – hatte ich wenig oder kein Geld.
Some years ago — I won’t say exactly how long — I had little or no money.
Ich hatte auch nichts Besonderes, das mich an Land hielt.
I also had nothing special to keep me on land.
Also beschloss ich, eine Zeit lang zu segeln und den nassen Teil der Welt zu sehen.
So I decided to sail for a while and see the watery part of the world.
So fühle ich mich besser und aktiver.
This is how I feel better and more active.
Manchmal fühlt sich mein Mund eng und hart an.
Sometimes my mouth feels tight and grim.
Manchmal fühlt sich meine Seele wie ein nasser, grauer November an.
Sometimes my soul feels like a wet, gray November.
History
- Written by Herman Melville in English
- Adapted by Line by Line Publishing in 2026