Ken Kesey

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is a riveting and unforgettable exploration of the human spirit set against the backdrop of a mental institution in the 1960s. The story unfolds in an Oregon psychiatric hospital where the authoritarian Nurse Ratched holds unyielding power over her patients. She uses a combination of psychological manipulation, humiliation, and the threat...

Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is 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...

Powerful, poetic realism... makes the tired old subject of life in a mental hospital into an absorbing Orwellian microcosm of all humanity.—Life. An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s. This Viking Critical Library edition is accompanied by essays, discussion...