The classic Caribbean adventure story and foundational English novel, now in a new, illustrated Restless Classics edition with an introduction contextualizing the book for our globalized, postcolonial era.
When Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe in 1719, many of the readers who quickly became obsessed with the adventure story were convinced that it was a true-life travelogue written by its protagonist. Its original, full title drew them in: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Three centuries later, the book remains a classic of the adventure genre and is widely considered the first great English novel. But the book also has much to teach us, in retrospect, about entrenched attitudes of the colonizers toward the colonized, and it stands at the beginning of a long tradition of colonial literature and representation that still echoes today. Now with a new introduction by rising Jamaican-born journalist and scholar Garnette Cadogan and vivid illustrations by the Mexican artist Eko, the Restless Classics edition of Robinson Crusoe invites readers to reconsider this tale of a castaway who spends thirty years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before ultimately being rescued.
Recenzijos
There are a couple of ways to read a book written three hundred years ago. One can read it viewing the world as it was in the time the book was written, or one can assume todays societal values and political correctness. In this edition, readers really can have it both ways. One can read the text of the book alone and enjoy the beautiful writing of Daniel Defoe and this rather incredible adventure story, or one can begin with the amazing introduction by Jamaica Kincaid and read the book with todays point of view. Defoes works were groundbreaking and deserve to be read through an historical lens, giving todays readers an opportunity to see how much the world has, thankfully, changed. -- Rosi Hollinbeck * Manhattan Book Review * Its a triumph. Kincaid, at the start, writes that she herself is a Friday in all but name, giving the main character, his creator, and the empire that birthed them what-for; the Mexican artist Eko contributes gorgeous and striking illustrations throughout the text. This is a wonderfully published book, right down to the blurbs, which come waltzing through history from Ms. Woolf, Mr. Coetzee, Mr. Fuentes, Mr. Dickens, and Mr. Samuel Johnson, who rightly asks, Was there ever anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers? -- Casey Cep * The New Yorker *
About the Author:
Daniel Defoe (c. 16601731) was an English writer, journalist, and spy, who gained enduring fame for his novel, Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest practitioners of the novel and helped popularize the genre in Britain. In some texts he is even referred to as one of the founders, if not the founder, of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than five hundred books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.
About the Introducer:
Jamaica Kincaid is a Caribbean American writer whose essays, stories, and novels are evocative portrayals of family relationships and her native Antigua. Settling in New York City when she left Antigua at age 16, she became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1976. Her books include the short story collection At the Bottom of the River (1983), the novels Annie John (1984) and Lucy (1990), the three-part essay A Small Place (1988), the novel The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) and nonfiction book My Brother (1997). Her Talk of the Town columns for The New Yorker were collected in Talk Stories (2001), and in 2005 she published Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya. Her most recent book is the novel See Now Then (2013).
About the Artist:
Born in Mexico in 1958, Eko is a cartoonist, engraver, and painter. His wood etchings, often erotic in nature and the focus of controversial discussion, are part of a broader tradition in Mexican folk art popularized by José Guadalupe Posada. He has collaborated on projects for the New York Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Spanish daily El Paķs, in addition to having published numerous books in Mexico and Spain. He is the illustrator of three books in the Restless Classics series: Don Quixote, Frankenstein, and Robinson Crusoe.
