Friday, or, The Other Island is a 1967 novel by French writer Michel Tournier

Michel Tournier

Michel Tournier is a French writer.His works are highly considered and have won important awards such as the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française in 1967 for Friday, or, The Other Island and the Prix Goncourt for The Erl-King in 1970...

. It retells Daniel Defoe's

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...

 Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...

. The first edition of the book was published 15th March 1967. It won that year's Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française

Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française

Le Grand Prix du Roman is a French literary award, created in 1918, and given each year by the Académie française. Along with the Prix Goncourt, it is one of the oldest and most prestigious literary awards in France...

.

In the year 1971 Michel Tournier rewrote the book, adapting it for younger readers, under the title Vendredi ou la Vie sauvage.

Plot

The young Robinson Crusoe is shipwrecked on a desert island that he names Speranza (Hope). Crusoe tries to civilize and control the nature of the island, but is redeemed by the appearance of 'Araucanian'

Mapuche

The Mapuche are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina. They constitute a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who shared a common social, religious and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage. Their influence extended...

 whom he names as Friday. Because of the deep change that happens in Crusoe during the stay, he finally does not want to return from the island, while Friday does.

See also

• Le Mondes 100 Books of the Century
  Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
  The 100 Books of the Century is a grading of the books considered as the hundred best of the 20th century, drawn up in the spring of 1999 through a poll conducted by the French retailer Fnac and the Paris newspaper Le Monde....