The Road

孩子出生的前幾夜，不知名的災難改變了世界的樣貌。

舉目所見只有冰冷的雨雪、無盡的黑暗，再不見清朗日光或蔚藍天色。荒蕪嚴寒的末日，道德淪喪，善惡無分，吞噬弱者是唯一的生存之道，人性與尊嚴在此灰色煉獄裡蕩然無存。

一對父子在文明的廢墟間踽踽獨行，往南方海岸去尋找一線生機。孤獨的漫漫長路上，空氣是灰濛的，地面成灰，滿目瘡痍，眼前不見任何生物的蹤跡，唯有困頓凋零、無數死亡，然而父親仍教導孩子，要記得那個曾經有夢、有故事、有海洋綠樹的世界，要留守心中對於美與善的顧念與堅持……

當家園崩毀，人類滅絕，食物匱乏，只剩少數倖存者時，我們能殘害他人生命以求自保嗎？

我們所仰賴的那些美好的價值和道德觀，將是延續性命的阻礙嗎？

麥卡錫在構思多年之後，以最精煉的字句織就，寫成《長路》一書，表達他對環境以及對人性的關注，也是獻給全世界的一首優美輓歌。

作者簡介

戈馬克．麥卡錫Cormac McCarthy（1933.7.20-）

一九三三年於美國羅德島出生，原名查爾斯．麥卡錫（Charles McCarthy）。曾獲詹姆斯泰特布萊克紀念文學獎（英國歷史最悠久之文學獎）、美國國家書卷獎、美國國家書評人獎、普立茲文學獎、鵝毛筆獎等眾多獎項，被譽為是海明威與福克納的唯一後繼者。

一九六五年於藍燈書屋出版第一本小說The Orchard Keeper（此書編輯正是與福克納長期合作的Albert Erskine），其後陸續出版Outer Dark、Child of God、Suttree等，皆獲好評。

一九八五年出版的《血色子午線》（Blood Meridian）為麥卡錫創作生涯的轉捩點。此書開啟了麥卡錫往後以美國西部為創作背景的一系列作品。一九九二年出版的「邊境三部曲（Border Trilogy）」首卷《所有漂亮的馬》（All the Pretty Horses），獲得大眾讀者的廣泛注意，將麥卡錫推向暢銷作家之林。生性低調的他，也在此時首度接受媒體專訪。二○○六年，《紐約時報》將「邊境三部曲」列為美國近二十五年來最優秀的小說作品；二○○八年，由No Country for Old Men改編的電影「險路勿近」囊括奧斯卡四項大獎。

麥卡錫最受矚目的新作《長路》被譽為足以角逐諾貝爾文學獎，英國《衛報》專欄作家、知名環保人士喬治．蒙貝特更將麥卡錫列為「拯救地球五十人」名單中，認為「《長路》對環保的影響力，可說無他能出其右。未來三十年內，這本書給予我們的警醒，勝過任何統計數字或報導。」

《長路》中文版由麥田出版社出版。

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
National Book Critic's Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book

One of the Best Books of the Year

　　The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post

　　The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.

　　A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food--and each other.

　　The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it 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.

About the Author

　　Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island. He attended the University of Tennessee in the early 1950s, and joined the U.S. Air Force, serving four years, two of them stationed in Alaska. McCarthy then returned to the university, where he published in the student literary magazine and won the Ingram-Merrill Award for creative writing in 1959 and 1960. McCarthy next went to Chicago, where he worked as an auto mechanic while writing his first novel, The Orchard Keeper.

　　The Orchard Keeper was published by Random House in 1965; McCarthy's editor there was Albert Erskine, William Faulkner's long-time editor. Before publication, McCarthy received a traveling fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which he used to travel to Ireland. In 1966 he also received the Rockefeller Foundation Grant, with which he continued to tour Europe, settling on the island of Ibiza. Here, McCarthy completed revisions of his next novel, Outer Dark.

　　In 1967, McCarthy returned to the United States, moving to Tennessee. Outer Dark was published by Random House in 1968, and McCarthy received the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing in 1969. His next novel, Child of God, was published in 1973. From 1974 to 1975, McCarthy worked on the screenplay for a PBS film called The Gardener's Son, which premiered in 1977. A revised version of the screenplay was later published by Ecco Press.

　　In the late 1970s, McCarthy moved to Texas, and in 1979 published his fourth novel, Suttree, a book that had occupied his writing life on and off for twenty years. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981, and published his fifth novel, Blood Meridian, in 1985.

　　After the retirement of Albert Erskine, McCarthy moved from Random House to Alfred A. Knopf. All the Pretty Horses, the first volume of The Border Trilogy, was published by Knopf in 1992. It won both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and was later turned into a feature film. The Stonemason, a play that McCarthy had written in the mid-1970s and subsequently revised, was published by Ecco Press in 1994. Soon thereafter, Knopf released the second volume of The Border Trilogy, The Crossing; the third volume, Cities of the Plain, was published in 1998.

　　McCarthy's next novel, No Country for Old Men was published in 2005. This was followed in 2006 by a novel in dramatic form, The Sunset Limited, originally performed by Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago and published in paperback by Vintage Books. McCarthy's most recent novel, The Road, was also published by Knopf in 2006.