The Border Trilogy

Cormac McCarthy

12 July 2018
9781509852024
1056 pages

Synopsis

With an introduction by novelist Rachel Kushner

In the vanishing world of the Old West, two cowboys begin an epic adventure, and their own coming-of-age stories. In All the Pretty Horses, John Grady Cole’s search for a future takes him across the Mexican border to a job as a ranch hand and an ill-fated romance. The Crossing is the story of sixteen-year-old Billy Parham, who sets off on a perilous journey across the mountains of Mexico, accompanied only by a lone wolf. Eventually the two come together in Cities of the Plain, in a stunning tale of loyalty and love.

A true classic of American literature, The Border Trilogy is Cormac McCarthy’s award-winning requiem for the American frontier. Beautiful and brutal, filled equally with sorrow and humour, it is a powerful story of two friends growing up in a world where blood and violence are conditions of life.

One of the greatest American novels of this or any time
A book of remarkable beauty and strength, the work of a master in perfect command of his medium
The prose is clean and hard as pebbles . . . The great news is that All the Pretty Horses is only part one of the trilogy, and so, conceivably, only a third as good as it's going to get