Robinson Crusoe

Everyone knows this novel. Even those who haven’t read it (which is hard to imagine) remember the gist: a young sailor sets off on a far voyage and, after a shipwreck, ends up on a deserted island. He spends there about twenty-eight years. That’s basically “the content.” Humanity has been devouring the novel for more than two hundred years; an endless list of its adaptations, sequels, and imitations continues; economists build models of human existence based on it (“Robinsonades”); J.-J. Rousseau enthusiastically included it in his pedagogical system.