Foe.

COETZEE, J.M.

Item Number: 2567

South Africa: Raven Press, 1986.

South Africa: Raven Press, 1986. First South African edition of Coetzee’s retelling of Robinson Crusoe. Octavo, original boards. Very good in a very good dust jacket. Signed by the author on the title page.

Woven around the existing plot of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Foe is written from the perspective of Susan Barton, a castaway who landed on the same island inhabited by Crusoe as his adventures are already underway. Analysts of the book have primarily focused on themes of power and language use, particularly as it relates to marginalized people. In 1994 Patrick McGrath of The New York Times claimed that one of Coetzee's central themes throughout his body of work is the "linkage of language and power, the idea that those without voices cease to signify, figuratively and literally"; McGrath pointed to Foe as the "most explicit expression" of that theme.