The ultimate survival story: a shipwrecked sailor's disintegration into 'a naked madman on a rock' by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding. An hour on this rock is a lifetime. Christopher Martin, the sole survivor of a torpedoed destroyer, is stranded upon a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. Pitted against him are the sea, the sun, the brutal cold, and the aching terror of his isolation. To drink there is a pool of rainwater; to eat, seaweed and anemones, preyed upon by feathered reptiles. As he descends into the abyss of his consciousness, weathering lightning strikes of memory, Martin must try to assemble the truth of his fate - piece by terrible piece.