The Road Cormac McCarthy Picador, 256pp, £16.99 ISBN 033044753X

A father and his son journey through a ravaged, desolate, post-apocalyptic America. They are frozen, half-starving and constantly at risk of attack from marauders, many of whom have resorted to cannibalism. They have a gun with two bullets, and carry all their worldly possessions in a shopping trolley. We know that, at some point, the mother lost hope and killed herself, but we are furnished with few factual details. Instead, we (and the boy) rely on the father’s memories, first for clues as to what happened, and then for respite from the bleak, cauterised present. Their struggle to survive seems futile: they have no goal other than to get south, where it will be warmer, and to find "the good guys".
Plenty of political allegory is at work here: there are parallels with the conflict-decimated landscape of Iraq, and one cannot fail to note the significance of the last can of Coke. But these elements become secondary to the gripping, heart-rending human story, which explores the depths of despair and savagery beside the heights of love, tenderness and self-sacrifice. The dialogue is artfully spare, and the poetic, nuanced prose lends this alien world an unsettlingly familiar quality. McCarthy has delivered a master stroke: this tale is beautiful, hypnotic, and terrifyingly real.

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