In Search Of Robinson Crusoe - Softcover

Severin, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465076998 ISBN 13: 9780465076994

Publisher: Basic Books, 2003

Synopsis

Insightful travel writing, riveting narrative history, and clever scholarly discoveries make this a remarkably rich and varied book. Tim Severin has once again demonstrated a superb ability to bring together literature and adventure in an engrossing narrative.

About this title

Review:

Tim Severin's In Search of Robinson Crusoe is a fascinating melding of literary and bibliographic scholarship and wide-ranging travelogue that seeks out, and discovers, the flesh-and-blood prototypes for Daniel Defoe's famous castaway and his island home. Severin makes a convincing case that Alexander Selkirk, long assumed to be the model for Crusoe, was little more than Defoe's immediate inspiration. In fact, says Severin, Defoe based the setting and many episodes of his novel on gleanings from other contemporary accounts of maroonings (three, in particular). Severin's research takes him first to Selkirk's island, then to the coasts of Nicaragua and Honduras, where he visits the Miskitu Indians (on whose forebears Defoe likely based Crusoe's Man Friday) as well as to several thoroughly obscure Caribbean desert islets. The most intriguing sections of the book are recountings of the adventures of various abandoned seamen, including Pedro Serrano, a 16th-century mariner who maintained he had lived for seven years on a desolate cay devoid of fresh water. This is an audacious and thrilling book. --H. O'Billovich

About the Author:

Acclaimed adventure writer and explorer Tim Severin has made a career of retracing the journeys of literary or historical figures in replica vessels. These experiences have been turned into a body of captivating and illuminating books, including The Brendan Voyage, In Search of Genghis Kahn, and In Search of Moby Dick. Severin has received numerous awards for exploration and geographic history, including the Founder's Medal of England's Geographic Society. When not traveling, he lives in County Cork, Ireland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0465076998
• ISBN 13: 9780465076994
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344