What book starts with the line "Call me Ishmael."?

Ishmael is a fictional character in Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" (1851). Ishmael is the narrator of the book. As a character he is a few years younger than as a narrator. His importance relies on his role as narrator; as a character, he is only a minor participant in the action. The Biblical name has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts.

Because he was the first person narrator, most of the criticism of "Moby-Dick" either confused Ishmael with the author himself or overlooked him. From the mid-twentieth century onward, critics distinguished Ishmael from Melville, establishing the character's mystic and speculative consciousness as a central force in contrast to Captain Ahab's monomaniacal force of will.

By contrast with his namesake Ishmael from Genesis, who is banished into the desert, Ishmael is wandering upon the sea. Each Ishmael, however, experiences a miraculous rescue; in the Bible from thirst, here from drowning.

Though the novel famously begins with the words "Call me Ishmael," only once in the whole book is the narrator called Ishmael, self-address aside: when he signs up for the Pequod voyage in chapter 16, Captain Peleg refers to him as Ishmael.