One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [Paperback]

Ken Kesey's bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance

Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey’sOne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestis the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy’s heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned.Sketches by Ken Kesey   vii
Introduction by Robert Faggen   ix

Part One   1
Part Two  127
Part Three  173
Part Four   223 A work of genuine literary merit . . . What Mr. Kesey has done in his unusual novel is to transform the plight of a ward of inmates in a mental hospital into a glittering parable of good and evil.
--The New York Times Book Review

[A] brilliant first novel . . . a strong, warm story about the nature of human good and evil . . . Keysey has made his book a roar of protest against middlebrow society's Rules and the invisible Rulers who enforce them.
--Time

The final triumph of these men at the cost of a terrifying sacrifice should send chills down any reader's back. . . . This novel's scenes have the liveliness of a motion picture.
--The Washington Post

An outstanding book . . . [Kesey's] characters are original and real. . . . This is a tirade against the increasing controls over man and his mind, yet the author never gets on a soap box. Nor does he forget that there is a thin line between tragedy and comedy.
--Houston Chronicle