In 1720 the eminent man of letters Daniel Foe is approached by Susan Barton, lately a castaway on a desert island. She wants him to tell her story, and that of the enigmatic man who has become her rescuer, companion, master and sometime lover: Cruso. Cruso is dead, and his manservant, Friday, is incapable of speech. As she tries to relate the truth about him, the ambitious Barton cannot help turning Cruso into her invention. For as narrated by Foe - as by Coetzee himself - the stories we thought we know acquire depths that are at once treacherous, elegant, and unexpectedly moving.
"I am ever and always in love with “Foe...” Coetzee’s shortest and greatest novel is about how art and life will always be at odds. It’s about the irresistible seductions of bankrupt writers, and literature’s insufficient promise to show you another world."
"Foe is a finely honed testament to its author's intelligence, imagination, and skill.... The writing is lucid and precise, the landscape depicted mythic yet specific." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times