It’s hard to think of many superficial affinities between Frank O’Hara, the queer poet and art critic whose urbane voice is synonymous with 60s Manhattan, and Alexander Selkirk, the 18th-century Scottish privateer whose marooning on a tiny island in the South Pacific would eventually inspire Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Yet, curiously, it is a line from O’Hara’s poem Mayakovsky that Francesca de Tores refits for Selkirk’s mouth at the opening of her new novel, Cast Away.

Selkirk insists that he is cast upon the island “only by the catastrophe of my personality” – “which is a sobering thing, even for a man used to being sober”. And while the O’Hara of Mayakovsky is famously content to wait “for the catastrophe of my personality / to seem beautiful again, / and interesting, and modern”, Selkirk – newly and utterly alone on “a stony blemish in the ocean”, 400 miles off the coast of Chile – spends his first three days and nights on the island blind drunk on the cask of flip left behind with him as a courtesy from his erstwhile crewmates, raging at his fate. This act of unexpected transhistorical ventriloquism is a suitably strange beginning to a surprisingly uncanny novel.

De Tores’s first historical novel, Saltblood, dramatised the remarkable story of Mary Read, the real-life genderqueer buccaneer of piracy’s so-called golden age. Intrepid and unabashedly romantic, the novel won the 2024 Wilbur Smith adventure writing prize. As a follow-up, Cast Away – despite the obvious congruences of setting and theme – is a more wistful prospect. It’s still a historical maritime epic, but stripped of the genre’s conventional ballast, entirely rooted in a single location and concerned far more with the internality of its protagonist than the externalities of salt-washed and sun-baked mise en scène.

In the novel’s opening pages, Selkirk, crawling out of his three-day bender on the Más a Tierra strand, realises he is faced with a choice between hardscrabble survival and total oblivion: “Here … if I die I am lost to all knowing. The rats will have my flesh and the wind will scour my unburied bones, and no record will ever hold my name nor tell the story of my passing. It would be a dying more complete than any other.”

If you’re wondering how any author could wring a novel of more than 300 pages out of such scanty components, the answer is soon clear: compelling characterisation. De Tores’s Selkirk is an adorably reprobate antihero whose company never palls as we follow him through his long days spent hunting and skinning goats, smoking, scavenging and – understandably – engaged in furious bouts of onanism.

“Here on this island, I who have nothing must be everything,” Selkirk declares: “I must be roper and chandler and tanner and carpenter all at once.” The scenes in which he scrapes hides and brews moonshine are so comprehensive and painstakingly well researched that they could almost be used as how-to guides – yet somehow they never become tedious. Steadily, a spiritual dimension creeps into Selkirk’s labours: day by day the island transforms from prison to purgatory for the “intemperate” Scot.

Marooned with a single Bible as his source of spiritual succour, Selkirk at first rummages scripture for glancing mentions of breasts with which to augment his tropical wank-a-thons (the Song of Solomon and Books of Ezekiel prove particularly fruitful). But soon his thoughts turn more reflective. He begins to splice the gospel up into stark erasure poems and submit to the barren beauty of the island, where the hummingbirds dart around his campfire like “strange and shimmering machines of air”, and a colony of migratory sea lions tumble on to the beaches every year as a “landslide of flesh”.

Stripped bare, Selkirk begins to judge himself “a strange creature, full of goat meat and metaphors”, and wonder how a man might go about finding his “better self”: “Any pleasure I might have is tarnished always by my wretchedness and misery; I am furious when I eat, and desolate even when I frig myself, and in every way I know for certain that this island has ruined me. And yet I live, and I do not know whether I account it a comfort that I shall not soon die.”

The novel’s rubric makes no secret of Selkirk’s literary significance as the inspiration behind Robinson Crusoe, and it is obvious enough to the reader that he will eventually be rescued. The narrative tension of Cast Away resides mainly in De Tores’s decision to withhold a full explanation of Selkirk’s marooning on Más a Tierra – “the crowning calamity of a life built of calamities” – until the novel’s conclusion. Piecemeal, we learn of Selkirk’s youthful involvement in the abortive New Darien venture, a disastrous plan to found a Scottish colony in modern-day Panama, and of his childhood in Scotland, beset by the bullying of six elder brothers on one side, and the “shameful affection” of a cloying mother on the other (“and all the while dreaming of the sea”).

Cast Away may begin as a straightforward nautical adventure story, but it concludes as a poignant, sophisticated portrait of a man far more modern and interesting – at least in De Tores’s telling – than the historical record might let on. A man journeying toward an “unchurched” revelation of himself.

For many Harry Potter fans, no actors could ever live up to the original cast of the cherished film franchise. For others, a new TV adaptation is an opportunity for greater detail and faithfulness to JK Rowling’s magical seven-book series.

Much of the guessing and speculation can be put to rest now, as HBO has made its first official casting announcement for some of the wizarding world’s most notable characters in its forthcoming Harry Potter series.

The company announced on Monday that John Lithgow would play Albus Dumbledore, Paapa Essiedu would be Severus Snape, Janet McTeer would be Minerva McGonagall, and Nick Frost would appear as Rubeus Hagrid. All four actors will be series regulars.

Meanwhile, Luke Thallon was announced to play Quirinus Quirrell and Paul Whitehouse to play Argus Filch, both in guest and recurring roles.

The series, designed to run for more than a decade, comes from the writer and showrunner Francesca Gardiner and director and executive producer Mark Mylod of Succession.

“We are happy to announce the casting of John Lithgow, Janet McTeer, Paapa Essiedu, Nick Frost, Luke Thallon and Paul Whitehouse to play Dumbledore, McGonagall, Snape, Hagrid, Quirrell and Filch,” the pair said. “We’re delighted to have such extraordinary talent onboard, and we can’t wait to see them bring these beloved characters to new life.”

The US actor Lithgow, who most recently starred in the Bafta- and Oscar-winning papal election thriller Conclave, will take over the role played by Richard Harris and Michael Gambon in the films. Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is a caring and powerful wizard who mentors Harry in his fight against the dark lord Voldemort.

It had previously been reported that Mark Rylance was in the running for the part. But Lithgow – a veteran of stage and screen, and winner of six Emmy awards (including for his role as Winston Churchill in The Crown), two Golden Globes, an Olivier and a Tony – announced his own casting in February.

Essiedu received an Emmy nomination for his role in the critically acclaimed series I May Destroy You and also starred in series such as The Lazarus Project and Gangs of London. He will transform into the Hogwarts potions professor Snape, who was played by Alan Rickman in the films. Harry Potter is constantly at odds with Snape, who is hostile to him but is later revealed to have been bullied by Harry’s father, James, while harbouring an unrequited love for his mother, Lily.

McTeer, a past winner of numerous accolades including a Tony, an Olivier and a Golden Globe, will be McGonagall, the head of Gryffindor house – a role played by Maggie Smith in the films. McTeer has appeared in films including Tumbleweeds, Wuthering Heights and The Menu.

Meanwhile Frost, best known for his roles in the comedy films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, will take over from Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid, the Hogwarts groundskeeper and half-giant who becomes a faithful friend and ally to Harry and his friends.

The new casting announcement will undoubtedly draw much reaction from Potter fans. There had already been division after rumours first emerged that Essiedu was being considered to play Snape, who is described in the books as having “greasy, shoulder-length black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin”. Others were concerned that a US star had been cast to play Dumbledore.

The casting for the trio of main characters – Harry, Hermione and Ron – is yet to be announced, though it is likely they will be played by newcomers after Warner Bros launched an open casting call for children aged between nine and 11 last autumn. There have also been rumours that Cillian Murphy is being considered to play Voldemort.

According to HBO, the series will be a “faithful adaptation” of the books by Rowling, who serves as an executive producer. With a new cast, the show will delve into more detail than the eight feature films spawned by the epic franchise, released between 2001 and 2011.

The series will be “full of the fantastic detail, much-loved characters and dramatic locations that Harry Potter fans have loved for over 25 years”, Max, the newly branded streaming service for HBO, promised in a statement upon the series announcement in April 2023.

“Each season will be authentic to the original books and bring Harry Potter and these incredible adventures to new audiences around the world, while the original, classic and beloved films will remain at the core of the franchise and available to watch globally.”

Rowling has ownership over key aspects of the Harry Potter intellectual property, including the characters. But her involvement in the show has been divisive because of her opinions about trans people, which have drawn criticism from some of the franchise’s original stars. The writer’s expansive Harry Potter world – including the books, films, video games and theatre – is worth an estimated £20bn ($26bn).

At London’s Kings Cross station, site of the fictional platform 9 and ¾, fans were ambivalent about the cast.

“As someone who grew up with the books, I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ve created,” said 25-year-old Grace Whitehill from London. “But at the same time, I don’t want my experience to be ruined if they create something that’s too far from what JK Rowling originally wrote.”

Banker Jaston Fernandes, 25, agreed. “I think my only concern is I don’t want it to tarnish the legacy of what it’s been,” he said. “I’ve not seen the Cursed Child because I think it’s perfect as it is. I don’t want to touch it.”

Fans were also quick to address the backlash faced by the casting of Essiedu as Snape. “[Essiedu] is not the problem – he’s a good actor in everything he does,” said Aurelia Jumeaucourt, a 30-year-old consultant from Paris. “The problem is people. As long as he’s a good actor, I don’t care what he looks like.”

“Sometimes the fandom can be quite toxic,” said Whitehill, who has left many of the social media groups she was once part of. “It’s really lovely when you meet the right people, but sometimes it can get very cultish.”

The series is expected to debut on Max and the HBO and Warner Bros Discovery streaming service in 2026, almost 30 years after the first book in Rowling’s bestselling series was published in 1997, and 15 years after the final film landed on screens.