Cover of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

4.1
(29 ratings)
320 pages1977PenguinISBN 9780140043129

About this book

<p><b>Ken Kesey's bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance, and the inspiration for the new Netflix original series <i>Ratched</i></b><br><br>A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, <i>One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest</i> 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.</p><p>With <i>One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest</i>, 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.</p>

Publication Details

Publisher
Penguin
Published
1977
Pages
320
ISBN
9780140043129
Language
en

About Ken Kesey

KEN KESEY was born in La Junta, Colorado, but his family later moved to Springfield, Oregon, where he attended public schools, and later the University of Oregon at Eugene. He has received the Woodrow Wilson scholarship to Stanford University and a Saxton Fellowship, and won the Fred Lowe Scholarship awarded to the outstanding wrestler in the Northwest. Mr. Kesey was king of the Merry Pranksters, a group which traveled the West Coast staging happenings; as a leader of this group, Mr. Kesey appeared as subject and star in the bestseller, THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST, by Tom Wolfe. At present he is "scratching his athlete's foot on his farm in Oregon, watching his kids and blueberries grow." Photo: By <span title="must have been published or publicly displayed outside Wikipedia">Source</span> (<a href="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Non-free_content_criteria#4" title="Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria">WP:NFCC#4</a>), <a href="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ken_Kesey,_American_author,_1935-2001.jpg" title="Fair use of copyrighted material in the context of Ken Kesey">Fair use</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54571568">Link</a>

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