Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories

Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories (1924) published posthumously, showcases Herman Melville at his most compassionate and socially engaged. In this final exploration of his self-proclaimed quarrel with God, Melville offers a blistering critique of slavery and social injustice while exploring the conflict between the individual’s drive towards freedom and the inhuman absurdities of modernity. The New England Quarterly raves, “Billy Budd is a book to be read many times.”