The Stand - Softcover

King, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307947300 ISBN 13: 9780307947307

Publisher: Anchor Books, 1900

Synopsis

Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published.

Soon to be a television series

A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world's population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge--Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious "Dark Man," who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them--and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.

(This edition includes all of the new and restored material first published in The Stand The Complete And Uncut Edition.)

About this title

Review

In 1978, science fiction writer Spider Robinson wrote a scathing review of The Stand in which he exhorted his readers to grab strangers in bookshops and beg them not to buy it.

The Stand is like that. You either love it or hate it, but you can't ignore it. Stephen King's most popular book, according to polls of his fans, is an end-of-the-world scenario: a rapidly mutating flu virus is accidentally released from a U.S. military facility and wipes out 99 and 44/100 percent of the world's population, thus setting the stage for an apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil.

"I love to burn things up," King says. "It's the werewolf in me, I guess.... The Stand was particularly fulfilling, because there I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and man, it was fun! ... Much of the compulsive, driven feeling I had while I worked on The Stand came from the vicarious thrill of imagining an entire entrenched social order destroyed in one stroke."

There is much to admire in The Stand: the vivid thumbnail sketches with which King populates a whole landscape with dozens of believable characters; the deep sense of nostalgia for things left behind; the way it subverts our sense of reality by showing us a world we find familiar, then flipping it over to reveal the darkness underneath. Anyone who wants to know, or claims to know, the heart of the American experience needs to read this book. --Fiona Webster

Review

"A master storyteller."
--Los Angeles Times

"[The Stand] has everything. Adventure. Roman. Prophecy. Allegory. Satire. Fantasy. Realism. Apocalypse. Great!"
--The New York Times Book Review

"As brilliant a dark dream as has ever been dreamed in this century."
--Palm Beach Post

"An undisputed master of suspense and terror."
--The Washington Post

"King is one of the most powerful storytellers we have. His work satisfies on first reading and is even better the second time around."
--Chicago Tribune

"Crackling . . . with explosive climaxes."
--The Boston Globe

"[For] those who like their horror on a humongous scale."
--Los Angeles Times

"Peerless imagination."
--The Observer (London)

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Publication date: 1900
• ISBN 10: 0307947300
• ISBN 13: 9780307947307
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 1200