Friday

A fascinating, unusual novel... a remarkably heady French wine in the old English bottle... Tournier has attempted nothing less than an exploration of the soul of modern man. New York Times Book Review Like [Crusoe's island], Tournier's novel is unique, self-sufficient, imaginative, well worth exploring, and with a number of minor miracles to reveal. Time M. Tournier is a cultivated and disciplined writer, and his Robinson, the son of a Yorkshire draper, is most likable... [T]he castaway has that quaint and peculiarly English stolidity that seems to exist only in the imagination of the French. New Yorker Defoe's book is distinguished by an unawareness of the psychology of solitude; nothing happens. Michel Tournier, however, has placed his man in precisely the same situation of static impotence, and then proceeds to illustrate a personal development as passionate and variegated as anyone could wish. New Statesman