One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
by Ken Kesey.First published 1962.
Published by Picador.
ISBN 13: 9780774033442
ISBN 10: 0774033444
ASIN: 0774033444
Description:
An international bestseller and the basis for
the hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one
of the defining works of the 1960s.
“BRILLIANT!” – Time.
ISBN 10: 0774033444
ASIN: 0774033444
In this classic novel, Ken Kesey’s hero is
Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers
into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming
fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the
dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in
wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance,
which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war
between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, backed by the full power of
authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens
when Nurse Ratched uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the
story’s shocking climax.
Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an
Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by
her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of
electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy
– the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to
oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through
the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands
McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them
imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and
devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.