It is January 1719 & Daniel Defoe, almost sixty, sits at a table, writing. He is troubled with gout & debt, but for now is preoccupied with a younger man on a barren shore
- ” Robinson Crusoe, for which he will principally be remembered. Several miles south, an old man, Robert Knox, is bent over a heavy volume. It is Historical Relation, his account of being held captive on Ceylon, published forty years ago after he escaped & returned to Engl&. It has long been out of print, but a copy perhaps sits on the desk of Daniel Defoe as he writes. Where did Crusoe come from? & what is the secret of his endurance? ” Crusoe” explores the intertwined lives of two real men
- Daniel Defoe & Robert Knox
- & the character & book that emerged from their peculiar conjunction. It is the biography of a book & its hero, the story of Defoe, the man who wrote ” Robinson Crusoe”, & of Robert Knox, the man who was Crusoe.