About the Author

The novels of the American writer, CORMAC McCARTHY, have received a number of literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His works adapted to film include All the Pretty Horses, The Road, and No Country for Old Men—the latter film receiving four Academy Awards, including the award for Best Picture. He died in 2023.

Reviews

A New York Times Notable Book • One of the Best Books of the Year: The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post

"His tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful. It might very well be the best book of the year, period." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Vivid, eloquent ... The Road is the most readable of [McCarthy's] works, and consistently brilliant in its imagining of the posthumous condition of nature and civilization." —The New York Times Book Review

"One of McCarthy's best novels, probably his most moving and perhaps his most personal." —Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Illuminated by extraordinary tenderness.... Simple yet mysterious, simultaneously cryptic and crystal clear. The Road offers nothing in the way of escape or comfort. But its fearless wisdom is more indelible than reassurance could ever be." —The New York Times

"No American writer since Faulkner has wandered so willingly into the swamp waters of deviltry and redemption.... [McCarthy] has written this last waltz with enough elegant reserve to capture what matters most." —The Boston Globe

"We find this violent, grotesque world rendered in gorgeous, melancholic, even biblical cadences.... Few books can do more; few have done better. Read this book." —Rocky Mountain News

"A dark book that glows with the intensity of [McCarthy's] huge gift for language.... Why read this? ... Because in its lapidary transcription of the deepest despair short of total annihilation we may ever know, this book announces the triumph of language over nothingness." —Chicago Tribune

"The love between the father and the son is one of the most profound relationships McCarthy has ever written." —The Christian Science Monitor

"The Road is a wildly powerful and disturbing book that exposes whatever black bedrock lies beneath grief and horror. Disaster has never felt more physically and spiritually real." —Time

"The Road is the logical culmination of everything [McCarthy]'s written." —Newsweek

"There is an urgency to each page, and a raw emotional pull ... making [The Road] easily one of the most harrowing books you'll ever encounter.... Once opened, [it is] nearly impossible to put down; it is as if you must keep reading in order for the characters to stay alive.... The Road is a deeply imagined work and harrowing no matter what your politics." —Bookforum

Violence, in McCarthy's postapocalyptic tour de force, has been visited worldwide in the form of a "long shear of light and then a series of low concussions" that leaves cities and forests burned, birds and fish dead and the earth shrouded in gray clouds of ash. In this landscape, an unnamed man and his young son journey down a road to get to the sea. (The man's wife, who gave birth to the boy after calamity struck, has killed herself.) They carry blankets and scavenged food in a shopping cart, and the man is armed with a revolver loaded with his last two bullets. Beyond the ever-present possibility of starvation lies the threat of roving bands of cannibalistic thugs. The man assures the boy that the two of them are "good guys," but from the way his father treats other stray survivors the boy sees that his father has turned into an amoral survivalist, tenuously attached to the morality of the past by his fierce love for his son. McCarthy establishes himself here as the closest thing in American literature to an Old Testament prophet, trolling the blackest registers of human emotion to create a haunting and grim novel about civilization's slow death after the power goes out. 250,000 announced first printing; BOMC main selection. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

A New York Times Notable Book * One of the Best Books of the Year: The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post

"His tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful. It might very well be the best book of the year, period." -San Francisco Chronicle

"Vivid, eloquent ... The Road is the most readable of [McCarthy's] works, and consistently brilliant in its imagining of the posthumous condition of nature and civilization." -The New York Times Book Review

"One of McCarthy's best novels, probably his most moving and perhaps his most personal." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Illuminated by extraordinary tenderness.... Simple yet mysterious, simultaneously cryptic and crystal clear. The Road offers nothing in the way of escape or comfort. But its fearless wisdom is more indelible than reassurance could ever be." -The New York Times

"No American writer since Faulkner has wandered so willingly into the swamp waters of deviltry and redemption.... [McCarthy] has written this last waltz with enough elegant reserve to capture what matters most." -The Boston Globe

"We find this violent, grotesque world rendered in gorgeous, melancholic, even biblical cadences.... Few books can do more; few have done better. Read this book." -Rocky Mountain News

"A dark book that glows with the intensity of [McCarthy's] huge gift for language.... Why read this? ... Because in its lapidary transcription of the deepest despair short of total annihilation we may ever know, this book announces the triumph of language over nothingness." -Chicago Tribune

"The love between the father and the son is one of the most profound relationships McCarthy has ever written." -The Christian Science Monitor

"The Road is a wildly powerful and disturbing book that exposes whatever black bedrock lies beneath grief and horror. Disaster has never felt more physically and spiritually real." -Time

"The Road is the logical culmination of everything [McCarthy]'s written." -Newsweek

"There is an urgency to each page, and a raw emotional pull ... making [The Road] easily one of the most harrowing books you'll ever encounter.... Once opened, [it is] nearly impossible to put down; it is as if you must keep reading in order for the characters to stay alive.... The Road is a deeply imagined work and harrowing no matter what your politics." -Bookforum