Mardi, and a Voyage Thither's the third book by American author Herman Melville, first published in 1849. Overview Mardi's Melville's first pure fiction work (while featuring fictional narrators, his previous novels were heavily autobiographical). It details (much like Typee and Omoo) the travelings of an American sailor who abandons his whaling vessel to explore the South Pacific. Unlike the first two, however, Mardi's highly philosophical and said to be the first work to show Melville's true… (More on Mardi)