Selkirk's Island: The True and Strange Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe

"Souhami does something very interesting with this book; first of all, she examines the story of Robinson Crusoe , which has somehow managed to hold onto its power and fascination through the centuries, and then she sets out to write a biography of Alexander Selkirk – whose story of being marooned in the early 1700s in the South Pacific largely inspired Defoe’s tale of Crusoe. Selkirk was a leatherworker’s son from Fife, just a few miles down the coast from where I grew up, and ran away to sea at a young age. Through a great deal of archival research Souhami reveals all sorts of details of Selkirk’s life, and what life was like in general for mariners and pirates in the south seas in the eighteenth century. It was a life consisting of almost unimaginable ordeals of discomfort, but there was also, through privateering against Spanish vessels, the opportunity to win great riches. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Souhami manages to tell Selkirk’s story with a focus being the island itself. In Defoe’s story, Crusoe lived on his island for something like 27 years, while Selkirk was on his just 4 years and 4 months. She talks about how he was almost captured by Spaniards two years into his experience, and there are very moving accounts of his rescue that she unearths from the (British) sailors who ultimately brought him home. Anyone interested in the background of Crusoe, and how they might survive on a desert island themselves, should definitely read this book! Defoe was prolific – he published sixteen other pieces of writing in 1718, the year Crusoe came out. And the appeal is I think at its heart because we love to imagine how we’d cope in his abandoned situation. It would be a terrifying one to be caught in, but it remains so appealing because it combines something quite frightening – being marooned – with something that many people also fantasise about – being left on a beautiful tropical island. What would it be like to cut yourself off from every single obligation in your life? How long would it take you to get bored? The tropical island is a stock image in our culture – it stands in for holidays, for rest and relaxation, for luxury, and reaching such a place is a shorthand symbol of success. Crusoe’s story also overlaps with other great myths – with the Garden of Eden, for example, or with the story of Odysseus marooned with Calypso. These undercurrents of other great stories run just under the surface with Crusoe, and to my mind they are a large part of why it continues to hold such power."