Cover of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

4.1
(604 ratings)
336 pages2016Penguin USISBN 9781101209042

About this book

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. 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. “BRILLIANT!”—Time “A SMASHING ACHIEVEMENT...A TRULY ORIGINAL NOVEL!”—Mark Schorer “Mr. Kesey has created a world that is convincing, alive and glowing within its own boundaries...His is a large, robust talent, and he has written a large, robust book.”—Saturday Review

Publication Details

Publisher
Penguin US
Published
2016
Pages
336
ISBN
9781101209042
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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