Robinson Crusoe - Mille feuilles

11 sound discs (approximately 13.5 hours)

English language

Published Dec. 2, 1998 by Recorded Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-4025-7116-9

The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe - published in 1719 - was Defoe's first novel and his best-known work. Loosely based on a true account of a Scottish sailor, Alexander Selkirk, it is a tale of one man's fall from grace, and progress to redemption.

Willful and impatient, young Robinson Crusoe disregards the advice of his family and heads for the open sea. His obduracy eventually leaves him stranded on an uninhabited island somewhere in the Caribbean - the sole survivor of a shipwreck. The account of his life, scratched out with rationed indigo ink on a dwindling supply of paper salvaged from the hull of a wrecked ship, speaks eloquently of the tenacity and ingenuity of the human spirit.

Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1660. Although groomed for the ministry, he would eventually join England's growing class of small tradesman. At the …

The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe - published in 1719 - was Defoe's first novel and his best-known work. Loosely based on a true account of a Scottish sailor, Alexander Selkirk, it is a tale of one man's fall from grace, and progress to redemption.

Willful and impatient, young Robinson Crusoe disregards the advice of his family and heads for the open sea. His obduracy eventually leaves him stranded on an uninhabited island somewhere in the Caribbean - the sole survivor of a shipwreck. The account of his life, scratched out with rationed indigo ink on a dwindling supply of paper salvaged from the hull of a wrecked ship, speaks eloquently of the tenacity and ingenuity of the human spirit.

Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1660. Although groomed for the ministry, he would eventually join England's growing class of small tradesman. At the age of 59 Defoe turned to writing fiction. Though often snubbed by the more genteel class, his novels were extremely popular with nearly everyone else. Today, many scholars argue that Defoe is the true father of the English novel.

41 editions

Ji FU reviewed Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

18th century Christian Fiction

4 stars

I really liked Robinson Crusoe. Much more than I expected to. It had a much deeper spiritual component that I had not expected, though maybe religion was just always part of life for Europeans of the 1700s. Robin(son) was a disobedient young man, even if "a good guy" in the eyes of the world. When he was shipwrecked and landed on his island of despair he went from not caring about Religion, to being mad at God, to knowing God never existed, to praying for his needs, to celebrating a sabbath, to being thankful that he had survived, to actually reading his Bible, to a true personal relationship with Jesus to bringing the only man he met to the same, and struggling how to live as a Christian in the world God put him.

At one time I thought it may have been the best Christian Fiction I ever …

I really liked Robinson Crusoe. Much more than I expected to. It had a much deeper spiritual component that I had not expected, though maybe religion was just always part of life for Europeans of the 1700s. Robin(son) was a disobedient young man, even if "a good guy" in the eyes of the world. When he was shipwrecked and landed on his island of despair he went from not caring about Religion, to being mad at God, to knowing God never existed, to praying for his needs, to celebrating a sabbath, to being thankful that he had survived, to actually reading his Bible, to a true personal relationship with Jesus to bringing the only man he met to the same, and struggling how to live as a Christian in the world God put him.

At one time I thought it may have been the best Christian Fiction I ever read, it felt so much more real than dumb stories like the Left Behind series or radicicolous stories like the Amish Romance series, until the last third or so of the book when it got kind of racist and violent, and adamantly anti-Catholic. While there are many racist and violent people who call themselves Christians now-a-days I don't believe that was ever the plan of the prince of peace, and the Catholic Church is the Church He founded.

But even with all I am amazed how much Defoe kept me "turning the pages" of my audio book in a very interesting story, told almost completely without any additional characters. I have a hard time believing the claim that this was the first ever English novel, but it would make sense why all of the older stuff we read in school were plays (which were meant to be seen not read) and not novels.

Subjects

Crusoe, Robinson (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Survival after airplane accidents, shipwrecks, etc. -- Fiction
Castaways -- Fiction
Solitude -- Fiction