The Crossing

The Crossing, together with its predecessor All the Pretty Horses, towers over most contemporary fiction. An American epic infused with a grand solemnity * Sunday Times *McCarthy writes prose as clean as a bullet cutting through the air and constructs tales as compelling as any you will read … They are stories about people as real as the land they ride and as disturbing as the rituals they enact * Daily Telegraph *Admirers of All the Pretty Horses will need little encouragement … McCarthy speaks to us in the thrilling, apocalyptic tones of an Old Testament prophet. We must treasure him * Sunday Telegraph *The Crossing is like a river in full spate: beautiful and dangerous * The Times *Nominally Westerns, these books are too entropic and philosophical to fit within the limits of the genre. They summon the ghosts of history, and haunt the gaps between justice and reality – Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room

Cormac McCarthy is one of the most enigmatic and reclusive superstars of the modern literary world. Living and writing from El Paso, Texas, he has shunned all requests for interviews, appearances at bookshops or literary festivals. Nonetheless, he remains one of the most admired writers of the last fifty years. His eight novels have received extraordinary reviews, being hailed as masterpieces of American literature. He has won the American National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for All the Pretty Horses, the first book of The Border Trilogy. Cormac McCarthy is the author of twelve novels and a play. All his novels are available in Picador editions. He died in June 2023.