About this title: 'A small miracle of a book ...of marvellous intricacy and overwhelming power' - "The Washington Post", Book World. Coetzee reinvents the story of "Robinson Crusoe", directing our attention to the seduction and tyranny of storytelling itself.
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780140096231ISBN:014009623X
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin, New York, NY, USA
Date Published: 24 Sep 1987 1986
ISBN-13:9780140096231ISBN:014009623X
Description: Very Good. Very fast shipping from friendly & experienced UK bookseller. £0.25 donated to charity. Ex-library, but in very good condition. 14 day unconditional money back guarantee. light. pp. 160. 19.6 x 13 x 1.3 cm. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: PENGUIN
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780140096231ISBN:014009623X
Description: Published by Penguin in 1987. Paperback. Number of pages: 160. Condition: Good. Used book but in Good Condition for sensible price. Shipped from UK. Delivery is usually 2-3 working days from order by Royal Mail, International Delivery is by Airmail. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Adult
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780670813988ISBN:0670813982
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780140096231ISBN:014009623X
Description: Good. Book may contain highlighting, underlining, and may have some cover stickering and wear. Orders usually processed in 24 hours. 100% satisfaction guaranteed. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin
Date Published: 22/02/2001
ISBN-13:9780140299533ISBN:014029953X
Description: Used-Good. Book in good or better condition. Dispatched same day from warehouse. Please email with any questions for quick response. read more
"Plain an almost dull on the surface, by the end you realize it's a beautiful tangle of practically all the important late-twentieth century literary themes in just about 150 pages. And that's not even getting into the whole South African thing. This is a great book, especially for a book club, which is why I read it (for work). We read Robinson Crusoe just before, so that makes this book even crazier. Good stuff."
"human communication. we make do with what we have. we fool ourselves. for sake of survival and sanity we must believe words perfectly correspond to the ideas and objects they signify. but they don't. we're all involved in a ridiculous game of existential 'operator': lying to ourselves that the blonde with the budding tits at that end whispered the same thing the stuttering asian kid who smells like kimchi told me at this end.
to riff on that old semiotics-101 saw: words may be the means by which to bridge the gulf between human experience and the world of ideas and objects, but they also act as a kind of verbal blockade effectively watering down said interaction. the word 'apple' pushes us away from, not closer to, the inherent nature of the object we refer to as 'apple'; the purity of human experience and thought is filtered through words: arbitrary handles we assign to objects and ideas masking their true nature and pushing us once (or twice or thrice) removed from whatever it is of which we choose to speak.
but what to do? abandon language? go back to a 'state of nature'? fuck that.
like the ancient greek mythmakers or contemporary iranian filmmakers, coetzee chooses the most simple of stories to express the most complex of ideas regarding language and power and authorship. the first section is simply astonishing; but the book descends, perhaps, into too much of a symbolically and allegorically charged wordscape. nonetheless..."
"This one was on my Daughter's reading list for a novel course. They're reading it as a companion piece to Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. You might think this is the Mrs. Cruso's story (didn't know there was another person on that island, heh?) or you might think it is the Mrs. de Foe story ... it's an interesting text and a quick read."
"David warned me that I wouldn't like this book and I should have listened, but I wanted a short book for a train ride. Coetzee has an interesting premise, imagining if a lone woman had washed up on Robinson Crusoe's island, and then hired Daniel Defoe to write her story. But he sacrifices character and narrative to his ideas, making the book (for me at least) boring and overly intellectual."
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