If you ask Samina Ali about the work that went into her new memoir, she might liken herself to a peckish ocean predator. “You know how they say a shark circles its prey? That’s what it was like,” she ...

Now the book’s famous opening line, “Call me Ishmael,” is transposed to the very end of the opera when the character has matured. “In the novel, Ishmael is telling a story that happened many years ago ...