The English adventurer and writer Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) only completed his first and most famous novel The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe at the age of almost 60, when he was already well-known as a journalist and for his many satires und pamphlets. The author based his realistic and detailed account on the experiences of a contemporary who had been shipwrecked off the Chilean coast. The story of the shipwrecked sailor, which seems to fast forward through the history of developing civilisation, rapidly became a worldwide hit and is still considered a milestone in the history of the modern novel: “With Robinson Crusoe, Defoe created one of the great, timeless figures in world literature, on a par with Don Juan, Faust or Don Quijote.” (Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon)