Experience a shipwrecked sailor's psychic disintegration into 'a naked madman on a rock' by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies. An hour on this rock is a lifetime. Glistening limpets. The claws of a lobster. Wild tangles of seaweed. Slowly, his eyes open. Everywhere, there is sea. Only this jagged peak interrupts the vast expanse of the Atlantic: a tooth in a gaping jaw. But he will survive. Rainwater can be drunk; anemones eaten. He dries his oilskin beneath the screaming gulls, and discovers his papers: Christopher Hadley Martin, TY. Lieut., R.N.V.R. Weathering lightning strikes of memory, he must now reconstruct his fate - piece by terrible piece. 'Devastating ... Violently real ... The unique kind of novel that compels you to reread it.' Marlon James 'Wizardry of the first order.' Observer 'Terrifying . Magnificently original.' Sylvia Plath 'An amazing tour de force ... A blow-by-blow struggle for survival.' Stephen Spender 'Immense ... To read it is to undergo a shattering and memorable experience.' Kingsley Amis 'A master fabulist ... An iconoclast.' John Fowles