The Road

A profoundly moving narrative of a father and son traversing a ravaged landscape, McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic masterpiece is an intimate examination of family and devotion in the bleakest of environments and circumstances.

The late American master's post-apocalyptic modern classic, published here 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.

MEDIA REVIEWS

So good that it will devour you. It is incandescent - Telegraph

[The Road,] heartbreaking and haunting, has an overbearing, almost suffocating atmosphere . . . you cannot forget you’ve read it - The Times

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 - Emma Donoghue, author of Room and Haven

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, author of Our Fathers and Mayflies

You will read on, absolutely convinced, thrilled, mesmerized. All the modern novel can do is done here - Alan Warner, author of Morvern Callar

McCarthy conjures from this pitiless flight the miracle of unswerving humanity. Gripping beyond belief - Chris Cleave, Sunday 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

A masterpiece that will soon be considered a classic - Herald