Overview

'A revelatory meditation on humanity' GUARDIAN 'De Tores builds Selkirk’s world with detail and patience – it’s an impressive imaginative feat' THE TIMES 'Beautiful, fascinating, heartbreaking, philosophically engaging – and often very funny' JO HARKIN How big must a man’s folly be, that it can cost him the whole of his life? As big as a ship; as big as an island. 1704: Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk has been abandoned by his own shipmates on a remote, uninhabited island. With little hope of rescue, and wild goats and cats as his only companions, he is forced to confront not only the urgent challenges of survival, but also the troubled, unsavoury past that has brought him here. What kind of man is deliberately stranded by his crew, to face near-certain death? On the island, he must use his grit, tenacity and ingenuity to survive. As his isolation deepens, Selkirk’s experience takes an extraordinary and often blackly comic turn, for the island’s consolations prove as unexpected as its trials. The longer he is stranded, the more Selkirk wonders if he will ever escape the island, and in what ways he will be changed if he does. A tale of adventure and endurance, isolation and friendship, despair and hope, this gripping, singular novel asks who we are – and who we become – when everything else is stripped away. In Cast Away, award-winning author Francesca de Tores boldly reimagines the real-life story of Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for the classic novel Robinson Crusoe. The world knows Crusoe’s story – yet what unfolds on Selkirk’s island is stranger by far . . .

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9781526661449

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Reviews

What makes Cast Away exceptional is the way de Tores threads Selkirk’s metaphysical struggles through the story, and writes about them with poetry, whimsy and humour. De Tores asks: what is the nature of a human, when everything extraneous has gone? I read Cast Away over one weekend and could not put it down. I adored it -- TONI JORDAN, author of Tenderfoot

A revelatory meditation on humanity . . . If you’re wondering how any author could wring a novel of more than 300 pages out of such scanty components, the answer is soon clear: compelling characterisation. De Tores’s Selkirk is an adorably reprobate antihero whose company never palls as we follow him through his long days spent hunting and skinning goats, smoking, scavenging and – understandably – engaged in furious bouts of onanism . . . A poignant, sophisticated portrait of a man far more modern and interesting – at least in De Tores’s telling – than the historical record might let on -- A. K. Blakemore * Guardian * De Tores builds Selkirk’s world with detail and patience – it’s an impressive imaginative feat -- Antonia Senior * The Times * What I imagine must have been lengthy and meticulous research has transformed on the page into a vivid, utterly convincing and immersive read . . . Beautiful, fascinating, heartbreaking, philosophically engaging – and often very funny. A necessary and delightful corrective to the Crusoe mythology -- JO HARKIN, author of The Pretender What makes Cast Away exceptional is the way de Tores threads Selkirk’s metaphysical struggles through the story, and writes about them with poetry, whimsy and humour. De Tores asks: what is the nature of a human, when everything extraneous has gone? I read Cast Away over one weekend and could not put it down. I adored it -- TONI JORDAN, author of Tenderfoot Delivers rich detail . . . with a concrete physical immediacy that is absolutely persuasive * New Zealand Listener * A brilliant story that drew me in from the first line . . . de Tores weaves a tale of survival and philosophical reflections about what it means to be human * Good Reading Magazine *

Author Information

Francesca de Tores is a novelist and poet. She is the author of six novels, published in more than 20 languages. Her first historical novel, Saltblood, was awarded the 2024 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. In addition to a collection of poems, her poetry is widely published in journals and anthologies. She grew up in Lutruwita/Tasmania and, after fifteen years in England, is now living in Naarm/Melbourne.

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