Cormac McCarthy’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a father and son crossing a devastated America is The Road.
Published in 2006, the post-apocalyptic novel follows the unnamed father and boy as they travel south toward the coast. Their world has been destroyed by an unspecified catastrophe, and they face hunger, cold, lawlessness, and the threat posed by violent survivors. McCarthy keeps the cause of the disaster unexplained, focusing instead on moral endurance and parental love.
The Road won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007. Its style is notably spare: dialogue often lacks quotation marks, and the characters are generally identified by roles rather than personal names.
John Hillcoat directed a 2009 film adaptation starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. It is distinct from McCarthy’s earlier Border Trilogy, which includes All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain.