One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) - Softcover

Kesey, Ken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014028334X ISBN 13: 9780140283341

Publisher: Penguin, 1999

Synopsis

An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s.

A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything she stands for quickly turns from sport to a fierce power struggle with shattering results.

With One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey created a work without precedent in American literature, a novel at once comic and tragic that probes the nature of madness and sanity, authority and vitality. Greeted by unanimous acclaim when it was first published, the book has become and enduring favorite of readers.

About this title

Review:

"This is allegory with a difference, the difference being found in the very method of composition, in the bi-tonal technique of terrible realism in conjunction with a profound and searching parable of government and the governed".

-- CHICAGO SUNDAY TRIBUNE

"A glittering parable of good and evil." --The New York Times Book Review
"A roar of protest against middlebrow society's Rules and the Rulers who enforce them." --Time

"A glittering parable of good and evil." The New York Times Book Review
"A roar of protest against middlebrow society s Rules and the Rulers who enforce them." Time"

"A glittering parable of good and evil." The New York Times Book Review
"A roar of protest against middlebrow society s Rules and the Rulers who enforce them." Time"

Book Description:

Chief Bromden, half American-Indian, whom the authorities believe is deaf and dumb, tells the story of a mental instituion ruled by Big Nurse on behalf of the all-powerful Combine. Into this terrifying grey world comes McMurphy, a brawling gambling man, who wages total war on behalf of his cowed fellow-inmates. What follows is at once hiilarious and heroic, tragic and ultimately liberating. Since its first publication in 1962, Ken Kesey's astonishing first novel has achieved the status of a contemporary classic. 'Kesey can be funny, he can be lyrical, he can do dialogue, and he can write a muscular narrative. In fact there's not much better come out of America in the sixties... If you haven't already read this book, do so. If youhave, read it again' Douglas Eadie, Scotsman

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 014028334X
• ISBN 13: 9780140283341
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288