Foe (Penguin Essentials) - Softcover

Coetzee, J. M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241973694 ISBN 13: 9780241973691

Publisher: Viking, 2015

Synopsis

Nobel Laureate and two-time Booker prize-winning author of Disgrace and The Life and Times of Michael K, J. M. Coetzee reimagines Daniel DeFoe's classic novel Robinson Crusoe in Foe. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. In an act of breathtaking imagination, J.M Coetzee radically reinvents the story of Robinson Crusoe. In the early eighteenth century, Susan Barton finds herself adrift from a mutinous ship and cast ashore on a remote desert island. There she finds shelter with its only other inhabitants: a man named Cruso and his tongueless slave, Friday. In time, she builds a life for herself as Cruso's companion and, eventually, his lover. At last they are rescued by a passing ship, but only she and Friday survive the journey back to London. Determined to have her story told, she pursues the eminent man of letters Daniel Foe in the hope that he will relate truthfully her memories to the world. But with Cruso dead, Friday incapable of speech and Foe himself intent on reshaping her narrative, Barton struggles to maintain her grip on the past, only to fall victim to the seduction of storytelling itself. Treacherous, elegant and unexpectedly moving, Foe remains one of the most exquisitely composed of this pre-eminent author's works. 'A small miracle of a book. . . of marvellous intricacy and overwhelming power' Washington Post 'A superb novel' The New York Times

About this title

About the Author:

J. M. COETZEE was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1940. The author of some fifteen novels and winner of numerous awards, Coetzee is the first author to have been awarded the Booker Prize twice: for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983 and for Disgrace in 1999. In 2003 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He lives in Australia.

From Publishers Weekly:

Imaginatively conceived and richly orchestrated, this slim novel by the author of Waiting for the Barbarians is at once a variant of the immortal Robinson Crusoe and a complex parable of art and life. Englishwoman Susan Barton, having been cast away by Portuguese mutineers, reaches the remote island occupied by another castaway named Cruso (sic and his man Friday. She lives on the desolate rocky island for over a year before they are "rescued" by an English ship. Cruso dies en route, and she and Friday are transported to England. The world, she says, demands stories of its adventurers; but how is the story to be told? Indeed, what really happened and what are the facts of her life? What of the mute Friday, sole witness to the events, whose tongue was cut out by marauding slavers? Or did Cruso commit the savage act? In England, she beseeches author Daniel Foe (sic to take the raw material and make a convincing narrative. How does art give life to experience, enliven it, make it vivid, memorable? The truth is sly, evasive; but the novelist closes in upon it with poetic precision to create a small, enigmatic work of art. We are pressed to see in the characters' relationships an allegory of the evil social order that poisons the author's native South Africa.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0241973694
• ISBN 13: 9780241973691
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 160