The Trickster and His Masquerade

The plot of the novel is quite simple, but the style and structure are rather complex. On a steamboat sailing along the Mississippi (Melville liked to use steamboats as a metaphor for society), a company of various ordinary people is... traveling. The elusive, mysterious Trickster interacts with each of them in different situations and scenes. You witness how the "Victim" and the "Predator" attempt to gain the upper hand over each other. There is an impression that the characters need deceit and want to be exploited. The Trickster, through satire and allegories, exposes the hypocrisy of society, critiques exploitation and racial inequality.
Herman Melville (1819–1891) was a prominent American writer. At the age of 18, he sailed as a cabin boy on a packet ship, worked as a teacher for a while, and then found himself on a whaling ship. Unable to endure the tyranny of a harsh captain, he escaped. He lived among cannibals in the valley of Typee for a month. He began his creative career by describing his life in captivity.
"The Trickster and His Masquerade" is one of the author’s last major literary works. It was published on April 1, 1857, the same day that the events of the novel take place. Melville’s father’s family came from Scotland, where there is a tradition on April Fools' Day of sending people on long journeys or with impossible tasks. The author masterfully plays with the narrative form, combining dialogues, essays, and parables, prompting the reader to reflect on the nature of truth and deception; in this work, Melville acts as a kind of precursor to postmodernism.