with non-humans and is full of pig slander.

Gregory Peck stars as Captain Ahab in the film adaptation of Herman Melville's novel Moby- Dick. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/Warner Bros

Perhaps the greatest non-human character book of all time. Funnier than I expected when I finally read it after years of pretending I already had. The white whale functions in the book as many things to many people, including the implacable and mindless maw of nature, but its final reckoning with the Pequod at least leaves open the possibility of intelligent self-preservation or even a focused revenge.

Women all over the world are turning into animals – orangutans, bears, and snapping turtles – but the central character of Emshwiller's book, Pooch, is a dog becoming a woman. This picaresque follows the adventures of anparticularly lovely example of her work, and contains wonderfully imagined, if unlikely, details of cat culture.

A loose retelling of Hamlet, but set on a dog breeding farm in Wisconsin in the 70s. The role of Ophelia is taken on very touchingly by the gifted canine and occasional point of view character, Almondine. A review in the Chicago Tribune identified Wroblewski's book as "easily the best work of fiction ever written about dogs". A bold claim, but also a defensible one.