When Alexander Selkirk was abandoned by his shipmates on the remote island of Juan Fernandez in 1704 he could not have know that he wouldn't see another human soul for four long years, could not have anticipated the lonely and fierce existence to which he had been condemned, nor could he have ever guessed that his plight - recreated in the form of Robinson Crusoe - would be immortalised by Daniel Defoe.

In this startlingly original book, award-winning author Diana Souhami brings new life to this story, evoking the abandoned sailor's struggle with solitude, God and the savage new home into which he had been so brutally thrust.