The Road
The Road
Book for:
April 2010 Group 1
April 2022 Group 3
The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The novel follows an unnamed father and son journeying together across a grim post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after a great, unexplained cataclysm has destroyed civilization and almost all life on Earth. Realizing that they will not survive another winter in their unspecified original location, the father leads the boy south, through a desolate American landscape along a vacant highway, towards the sea, sustained only by the vague hope of finding warmth and more "good people" like them, and carrying with them only what is on their backs and what will fit into a damaged supermarket cart.

Because of falling ash, the setting is very cold and dark and the land is devoid of living vegetation. There is frequent rain or snow, and electrical storms are common. Nearly all of the few human survivors are cannibalistic tribalists and/or nomads, scavenging the detritus of city and country alike for human flesh, though that too is almost entirely depleted.

The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It also won the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. It was named book of the decade by The Times.
About the Author
Cormac McCarthy
(born Charles McCarthy, July 20, 1933) is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels in various genres, ranging from Southern Gothic, to western, to post-apocalyptic. He has also written plays and screenplays. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.