ROBINSON CRUSOE, specifically Restless Books' gloriously illustrated Three-Hundredth Anniversary Edition of it

ROBINSON CRUSOE
DANIEL DEFOE (illus. Eko; introduction by Jamaica Kincaid)
Restless Books
$19.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Restless Classics presents the Three-Hundredth Anniversary Edition of Robinson Crusoe, the classic Caribbean adventure story and foundational English novel, with new illustrations by Eko and an introduction by Jamaica Kincaid that contextualizes the book for our globalized, postcolonial era.

Three centuries after Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe, this gripping tale of a castaway who spends thirty years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being ultimately rescued, remains a classic of the adventure genre and is widely considered the first great English novel.

But the book also has much to teach us, in retrospect, about entrenched attitudes of colonizers toward the colonized that still resound today. As celebrated Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid writes in her bold new introduction, “The vivid, vibrant, subtle, important role of the tale of Robinson Crusoe, with his triumph of individual resilience and ingenuity wrapped up in his European, which is to say white, identity, has played in the long, uninterrupted literature of European conquest of the rest of the world must not be dismissed or ignored or silenced.”

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: You really don't need me to mention anything about Defoe or his writing. Or, if you do, go to gutenberg dot org and download a free ebook of the text. You need to read it. Go on! Scoot! Come back when you've downloaded the ugly version. Or, if you're really lazy, go read the Wikipedia article to find out what it's about, so you can look at these illos with a properly appreciative eye.

This gorgeously illustrated tricentennial edition is entirely meant to be celebratory not introductory. I mean, look!


What stunning artwork, no? Any of them, but most especially #2 and #4 above, would work as wall art for me.

This is an elegant, easily-shelvable edition that will give you an æsthetic thrill every time you look at it. Anyone who already loves this fantastical story would enjoy the look and feel of it. Anyone who enjoys pretty editions of books as shelf decor would like it too, though I admit I frown on buying books that sit in one spot their whole lives by design. SOMEONE ought to read it. That's what a book is for!

Still and all I do not run the world (terrible oversight on the goddesses' part) so you enjoy things your own way. O.o

As Yule comes screaming in blazing hot like the ball of destruction it is on one's budget, reasonably priced beautiful things like this are welcome gifts. Especially to yourself.