Desert island Autodidactus" inspired Robert Boyle, an acquaintance of Pococke, to write his own philosophical novel set on a deserted island, "The Aspiring Naturalist". Ibn al-Nafis' "Theologus Autodidactus" was also eventually translated into English in the early 20th century. Published in 1719, Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" about a castaway on a desert island has spawned so many imitations in film, television and radio that its name was used to define a genre, Robinsonade. The novel features Man Friday, Crusoe's personal assistant. It is likely that Defoe took inspiration for Crusoe from a Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk, who was rescued in
Despair (novel) novels, with it trailing only "Lolita" (1955). However, Nabokov's biographer Brian Boyd seemed to have ambivalent feelings toward "Despair", noting that although "Nabokov's sheer intelligence crackles in every line... the book's style... seems sadly lacking in its structure... It never quite convinces, and page after page that would make one tingle with excitement in another context can here only intermittently overcome one's remoteness from a story whose central premise fails to merit the suspension of disbelief". "Despair" is the second Nabokov novel to feature unreliable narration from a first-person point of view, the first being "The Eye" with the character