Foe

Foe is a 1986 novel by the South African-born writer J. M. Coetzee, woven around the plot of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. It is narrated by Susan Barton, a castaway who lands on the island inhabited by a man she calls Cruso and by Friday, his servant whose tongue has been cut out.

Susan spends a year on the island, and when the three of them are rescued she finds that her account of it is not hers to publish. Cruso dies on the voyage home, Friday cannot speak for himself, and the writer she approaches, a Mr Foe, has his own ideas about what the story should be, which puts Susan in the position of arguing about the shape of the truth.

Coetzee writes a short novel that keeps close to Susan's voice and treats authorship as the subject rather than as a frame. It is one of his best-known books of the 1980s, and it is read as a reply to the novel that supplied its plot, with the argument turning on who is entitled to speak for the people who cannot.