The Road (Picador Classics) - Softcover

A masterpiece that will soon be considered a classic. * Herald * You will read on, absolutely convinced, thrilled, mesmerized. All the modern novel can do is done here. -- Alan Warner * Guardian * So good that it will devour you. It is incandescent. * Daily Telegraph * One of the most shocking and harrowing but ultimately redemptive books I have read. It is an intensely intimate story. It is also a warning. -- Kirsty Wark * Observer Books of the Year * McCarthy conjures from this pitiless flight the miracle of unswerving humanity. Gripping beyond belief. -- Chris Cleave * Sunday Telegraph * The first great masterpiece of the globally warmed generation. Here is an American classic which, at a stroke, makes McCarthy a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. -- Andrew O'Hagan

With an introduction by novelist John Banville. In a burned-out America, a father and his young son walk under a darkened sky, heading slowly for the coast. They have no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. The landscape is destroyed, nothing moves save the ash on the wind and cruel, lawless men stalk the roadside, lying in wait. Attempting to survive in this brave new world, the young boy and his protector have nothing but a pistol to defend themselves. They must keep walking. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Road is an incandescent novel, the story of a remarkable and profoundly moving journey. In this unflinching study of the best and worst of humankind, Cormac McCarthy boldly divines a future without hope, but one in which, miraculously, this young family finds tenderness. An exemplar of post-apocalyptic writing, The Road is a true modern classic, a masterful, moving and increasingly prescient novel.