Friday

The January 2026 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club

“What was Friday to Daniel Defoe? Nothing: an animal, at best a creature waiting to receive his humanity from Robinson Crusoe, who as a European was in sole possession of all knowledge and wisdom.” A stunning postcolonial retelling of Defoe’s myth, Michel Tournier’s Friday subverts expectations at every turn. Cast away on a tropical island, Tournier’s God-fearing Crusoe sets out to tame it, to remake it in the image of the civilization he has left behind. Alone and against all odds, he almost succeeds. Then Friday appears, and Crusoe is immediately infuriated by his mannerisms, by his “irrepressible, lyrical, and blasphemous” laugh, and most of all, by his natural intimacy with the island. Crusoe is certain that he has nothing to learn from Friday about how to live in nature. But after an accident destroys all of Crusoe’s hard work, it is up to Friday to teach him just how ignorant he is.

Winner of the 1967 Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie Française, Friday transforms one of the canonical texts of western literature into a tale of initiation, and affirms both the abundance of the natural world and the abiding presence of the marvellous and mysterious.