Foe is a novel that reimagines the story of Robinson Crusoe from a new angle. Susan Barton, an Englishwoman, is cast adrift and washes up on an island where she finds Cruso and his silent servant Friday. After their rescue she goes to England and seeks the writer Daniel Foe, hoping he will turn her story into a book.
The novel asks who gets to tell a story, whose voice is lost, and what happens to those, like Friday, who cannot speak for themselves. It is short, clever and moving, and it is a well-known example of fiction responding to a classic.
Quotes
But the island on which I was cast away was quite another place: a great rocky hill with a flat top, rising sharply from the sea on all sides except one, dotted with drab bushes that never flowered and never shed their leaves.
Crushed under his soles whole clusters of the thorns that had pierced my skin.
The stranger (who was of course the Cruso I told you of).
Nothing I have forgotten is worth the remembering.