Shipwrecked and cast ashore onto an uninhabited island, Robinson Crusoe ingeniously carves out a solitary, primitive existence for twenty-four years. Eventually, he meets a young native whom he saves from death at the hands of cannibals. He calls him Man Friday and makes him his companion and servant. Crusoe and Friday share in a variety of adventures, including a fierce battle with cannibals which culminates in the heroes recapturing a mutinous ship and returning to England.
Based partly on the real-life experiences of Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, Defoe’s novel of human endurance in an exotic, faraway land exerts a timeless appeal and has taken its rightful place among the great works of Western civilization.
John Lee's performance provides an excellent reason to listen to this classic of English literature. Like the author and the novel's protagonist, Lee is British. His deep voice recounts the memories of a sailor stranded alone on an island off the coast of Brazil. The story also gives Lee the opportunity to show his skill with the many accents of foreign sailors, adding a delightful authenticity to the yarn. Some narrators founder miserably in the sea of peculiar words used aboard sailing ships of the seventeenth century, but Lee handles them as though he has been aboard a ship all his life. Don't mistake this survival story as being intended solely for children, for it has all the complexities of language, suspense, and action adults love in great books. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
Virginia Woolf...
"A masterpiece...[that] marches on with magnificent downright simplicity."
About the Author
DANIEL DEFOE (1660-1731), born in London as Daniel Foe, was a novelist, pamphleteer, journalist, and political spy. He is celebrated for his frank and dramatic realism in fiction and the accuracy, vigor, and lucidity of his journalism. Considered the father of the English novel, he was also the first author of ghost stories in English literature. He is best known for his novels Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
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