One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Paperback)

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.

General

Imprint:	Penguin Putnam
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	Signet
Release date:	July 1992
First published:	February 1963
Authors:	Ken Kesey
Dimensions:	192 x 110 x 24mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	272
ISBN-13:	978-0-451-16396-7
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-451-16396-6
Barcode:	9780451163967

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Review This Product

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 | Review by: Lise K.

I’ve always loved the film where Jack Nicholson plays the lead role, delivering what is possibly his best performance to date. But the book is another story – literally. The book invites the reader into the surrealistic mind of the “gigantic but docile half-Native American inmate Chief Bromden” rather than that of inmate McMurphy (played by Nicholson in the film), and the Chief’s story and psyche is a million times more captivating and complex than McMurphy’s. The movie also does not do head Nurse Ratchet justice: as perceived by the Chief she is a monstrous, inhuman, truly frightening matriarch – a female Hitler whose sole purpose in life is to maintain absolute physical and mental control over not only her patients but also her staff. Where the film presented us with one memorable character, the book offers three unforgettable personalities locked in a struggle within a microcosm of the society of the day.

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