The Road
Cormac McCarthy's tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a burnt-out cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what few dwellings remain intact in the woods. Through this nightmarish residue of America a haggard father and his young son attempt to flee the oncoming Appalachian winter and head towards the southern coast along carefully chosen back roads. Mummified corpses are their only benign companions, sitting in doorways and automobiles, variously impaled or displayed on pikes and tables and in cake bells, or they rise in frozen poses of horror and agony out of congealed asphalt. The boy and his father hope to avoid the marauders, reach a milder climate, and perhaps locate some remnants of civilization still worthy of that name. They possess only what they can scavenge to eat, and the rags they wear and the heat of their own bodies are all the shelter they have. A pistol with
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What you might want to know about The Road
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Years after an unnamed catastrophe has burned the trees and killed almost everyone, a father and his small son walk a charred American highway south toward the coast. They push a shopping cart, share one pistol with two bullets, and hide from groups of road agents in the ash.
Yes. The Road won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It is widely considered one of Cormac McCarthy's masterworks alongside Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy.
Yes. John Hillcoat directed a 2009 film adaptation starring Viggo Mortensen. The film follows the novel closely. Most readers find both the book and film emotionally devastating.
The Road was written by Cormac McCarthy, published in 2006 by Vintage International.
The Road is 287 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Road takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
The Road is a standalone novel by Cormac McCarthy, not part of a series.
The Road is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
