The Road

Cormac McCarthy

2006 Winner

James Tait Black Prize for Fiction

2007 Winner

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

04 August 2022
9781035003792
336 pages

Synopsis

A post-apocalyptic classic set 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 Road is a masterpiece of American fiction from Cormac McCarthy.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The landscape is destroyed. Nothing moves save the ash on the wind. 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.

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 may yet find tenderness.

'The Road made me cry for days' – Emma Donoghue, author of Room and Haven

'[T]he most important environmental book ever written' – George Monbiot, author of Feral and Regenesis


With an introduction from John Banville, author of The Sea.

Adapted into a critically-acclaimed film starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron.

Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.

So good that it will devour you. It is incandescent
[The Road,] heartbreaking and haunting, has an overbearing, almost suffocating atmosphere . . . you cannot forget you’ve read it
McCarthy’s novel was one of the triggers for my writing Room; I wanted to see what a mother-child modern myth would look like, because his father-child one was so powerful