The Road  by Cormac McCarthy
The Road is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best of which we are capable: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.




Cormac McCarthy and Oprah Start Your Journey  Read an excerpt of The Road  
Set in the smoking ashes of a post-apocalyptic America, learn about Cormac McCarthy's The Road, a father-son journey toward the sea and an uncertain salvation. 
Read an excerpt.


Cormac McCarthy and Oprah  The Cormac McCarthy Interview  Watch  
In his first on-camera interview, Cormac sits down with Oprah to talk about his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, luck, money and more. Watch this exclusive conversation.
Watch all the videos with Cormac McCarthy


Discuss reading questions.  Reading Questions
The Road has a tendency to raise more questions than answers. Get the conversation started at your next book club meeting with this study guide.



Themes in The Road  Themes in The Road
What destroyed the world? How far would you go to protect your child's life? We've called in Cormac's scientific colleagues from the Santa Fe Institute to help us explore the novel in new ways.

Download your bookmark.  Print Your Bookmark  PDF  
Track your own progress on The Road with this exclusive Oprah's Book Club bookmark.
You will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to see this file. Download it here.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
About the Book
Set in the smoking ashes of a post-apocalyptic America, Cormac McCarthy's The Road tells the story of a father-son journey toward the sea and an uncertain salvation. The world they pass through is a ghastly vision of scorched countryside and blasted cities "held by cores of blackened looters who tunneled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell" [p. 181]. It is a starved world, all plant and animal life dead or dying, some human survivors even eating each other alive.

The father and son move through the ruins searching for food and shelter, trying to keep safe from murderous, roving bands. They have only a pistol to defend themselves, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

Awesome in the totality of its vision, The Road is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

The Road was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007. Read an excerpt.

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