Crusoe

A remarkable literary hybrid -- part biography, part detective story - about the enduring figure of Robinson Crusoe. January, 1719. A man sits at a table, writing. Nearly sixty, Daniel Defoe is troubled with gout and 'the stone', burdened with a large family and debts, mired in political controversy and legal threats.

But for the moment he is preoccupied by a younger man on a barren shore -- Robinson Crusoe. Several miles south another old man, Robert Knox, sits bent over a heavy volume -- the only book he has written, published nearly forty years before. The large folio is now worn and tattered, crammed with extra pages covered in notes and emendations.

A leaner copy of Knox's book is also on the shelf in Defoe's library, perhaps even open on the table as he writes. The title page distils its contents: 'An Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon in the East Indies: Together with an Account of the Detaining in Captivity of the Author and diverse other Englishmen now Living there and of the Author's.