Foe John Maxwell Coetzee

Some time in the second decade of the eighteenth century one Susan Barton told Mr Daniel Foe of her hard and unusual life — most particularly the span of time she spent cast away on an island with a man called Cruso and his multiliated negro servant Friday. This is the story of her story and how it fared at the hands of Foe; distorter of truth and inventor of histories.

The Life And Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was published in 1719 by renowned journalist Daniel Defoe. Enormously successful, it is the supposedly true story of a man stranded for many years on an island in the Atlantic with only his servant man Friday for company. No mention of Susan Barton is made in it.

‘When I reflect on my story I seem to exist only as the one who came, the one who witnessed, the one who longed to be gone: a being without substance, a ghost beside the true body of Cruso. Is that the fate of all storytellers?’