The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or the Real Robinson Crusoe

The true story that ignited the world's imagination. Alexander Selkirk was an actual sailor marooned on the remote Juan Fernandez Islands for over four years before his dramatic rescue in 1709. When Daniel Defoe transformed his tale into fiction, he created Robinson Crusoe. Now Xavier Saintine returns to the source, reimagining Selkirk's solitude with the psychological depth the real man deserves. The novel opens in St. Andrews, Scotland, where the charismatic young Selkirk leaves behind Pretty Kitty, the innkeeper who loves him, to join Captain Stradling's voyage. What follows is both a ripping adventure of survival and a profound meditation on what isolation does to the human mind. Saintine gives us not the mythic survivor of Defoe's invention, but a flesh-and-blood man wrestling with despair, ingenuity, and the long road back to civilization. It's the story behind the story, and far stranger than fiction.