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Friday

Friday

by Michel Tournier, translated from the French by Norman Denny

$16.95
$16.95
Available as E-Book Fiction French Literature
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“What was Friday to Daniel Defoe? Nothing: an animal, at best a creature waiting to receive his humanity from Robinson Crusoe, who as a European was in sole possession of all knowledge and wisdom.” A stunning postcolonial retelling of Defoe’s myth, Michel Tournier's Friday subverts expectations at every turn. Cast away on a tropical island, Tournier’s God-fearing Crusoe sets out to tame it, to remake it in the image of the civilization he has left behind. Alone and against all odds, he almost succeeds. Then Friday appears, and Crusoe is immediately infuriated by his mannerisms, by his “irrepressible, lyrical, and blasphemous” laugh, and most of all, by his natural intimacy with the island. Crusoe is certain that he has nothing to learn from Friday about how to live in nature. But after an accident destroys all of Crusoe’s hard work, it is up to Friday to teach him just how ignorant he is.

Winner of the 1967 Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie Française, Friday transforms one of the canonical texts of western literature into a tale of initiation, and affirms both the abundance of the natural world and the abiding presence of the marvellous and mysterious.

Additional Book Information

Series: NYRB Classics
ISBN: 9781681379814
Pages: 240
Publication Date:

Praise

A fascinating, unusual novel . . . a remarkably heady French wine in the old English bottle . . . Tournier has attempted nothing less than an exploration of the soul of modern man.
—The New York Times Book Review

Like [Crusoe’s island], Tournier’s novel is unique, self-sufficient, imaginative, well worth exploring, and with a number of minor miracles to reveal.
—Time

Friday is the latest and one of the best examples of the French genius for revisionism—for ringing original variations on a traditional theme. It is also unique in that enterprise because it is so moving, so touching in its elegance, so simple in its art.
—Richard Howard

Defoe’s book is distinguished by an unawareness of the psychology of solitude; nothing happens. Michel Tournier, however has placed his man in precisely the same situation of static impotence, and then proceeds to illustrate a personal development as passionate and variegated as anyone could wish.
—New Statesman

M. Tournier is a cultivated and disciplined writer, and his Robinson, the son of a Yorkshire draper, is most likable . . . The castaway has that quaint and peculiarly English stolidity that seems to exist only in the imagination of the French.
—The New Yorker

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