Adventure · Survival
Robinson Crusoe
Shipwrecked alone on an island, a sailor builds a life from nothing, until one day, years later, he finds a footprint in the sand.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
Alone on an island
Against his father’s advice, a young man from York goes to sea. After storms, a spell as a captive in North Africa and years as a planter in Brazil, he is the only survivor of a shipwreck, washed up on an island off the coast of South America. Robinson Crusoe saves what he can from the wreck, builds a shelter, keeps a calendar by cutting notches in a post, and learns, slowly and by failure, to make bread, pots and a boat. He lives alone for many years before he finds, on the shore, the print of a man’s bare foot. Daniel Defoe published the novel in 1719 as Crusoe’s own account, and it is often counted among the first English novels.
Why it works for learners
Crusoe writes the way a practical man thinks: what he has, what he needs, how he will make it. Lists, inventories and step-by-step explanations fill much of the book, ideal material for a learner. You meet the words for tools, food, weather, animals, seasons and building, and they repeat as Crusoe tries, fails and tries again. Part of the book is his journal, with short dated entries that are especially easy to read.
The original is long, full of eighteenth-century sentences and religious reflection, and its view of Friday and of the other people Crusoe meets is very much of its time.
Which level to start at
B1 is a good place to start: the survival story and the journal come through without Defoe’s very long sentences. A2 works too, because so much of the book is concrete. C1 and C2 are for readers who want the eighteenth-century voice.
Read next
- The Swiss Family Robinson, the same situation with a whole family
- The Mysterious Island, five castaways with an engineer
- The Moonstone, whose narrator consults Robinson Crusoe about everything