Robinson Crusoe Island in his 1719 novel about the character (although the novel is explicitly set in the Caribbean, not in the Juan Fernández Islands). This was just one of several survival stories from the period that Defoe would have been aware of. To reflect the literary lore associated with the island and attract tourists, the Chilean government renamed the place Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966. Robinson Crusoe Island has a mountainous and undulating terrain, formed by ancient lava flows which have built up from numerous volcanic episodes. The highest point on the island is above sea level at El Yunque. Intense erosion
Despair (novel) was distributed to the wrong audience. Nabokov would later lament that "Despair" was "a rhinoceros in a world of hummingbirds". Nabokov intended Hermann, and the novel in general, to be kind of a Dostoevskian (who is referred to as "Dusky and Dusty" in the novel) parody; this is even more evident as the original working title for the novel was to be "Zapiski mistifikatora" ("Notes of a Hoaxer"), akin to Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground". At one particular, Hermann even contemplates titling his narrative "The Double", before he realizes it has been used, and opts for "Despair" instead. Nabokov infamously despised