Robinson Crusoe

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What to expect

Shipwrecked and cast ashore on 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 Friday and makes him his companion and servant. Crusoe and Friday share in a variety of adventures, including a fierce battle with cannibals that 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.

Critics Review

  • “Three hundred years later, does Robinson Crusoe hold up as a classic? A classic is a book that generations have found worth returning to and arguing with. Vividly written, replete with paradoxes and troubling cultural attitudes, revealing a deep strain of supernaturalism beneath its realist surface, Robinson Crusoe is just such a classic and far more than a simple adventure story for kids.”

    Washington Post

  • “The footprint scene in Crusoe [is] one of the four greatest in English literature and most unforgettable.”

    Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist and travel writer

  • “John Lee does an excellent job narrating this classic shipwreck adventure story.”

    SoundCommentary.com

  • “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.”

    AudioFile

  • “Written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers.”

    Samuel Johnson, English author, biographer, and playwright

  • “[Robinson Crusoe], it can be argued, has had more impact on writing…than any other book in the English language.”

    Avi, Newbery Award–winning author

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