One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Paperback, 320 pages

English language

Published May 4, 2005 by Penguin Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-14-118788-4

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.

--back cover

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.

--back cover

55 editions

ATMmachine reviewed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (Modern Classics)

Unmatched modern classic

5 stars

Ken Kesey wrote an absolutely perfect story, the plot grips you asking what McMurphy will dare next, written from a perspective that happily contextualizes and compares the exploits of McMurphy, until the very end. This is a must read book for anyone interested psychiatry and a tribute to Ken Kesey's literary power.