Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Length: 272 pages
Audiobook Length: 10 hours and 32 minutes
First Published: 1962
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Publisher’s Description
In this classic novel, Ken Kesey’s hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Nurse Ratched uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story’s shocking climax.
Quotes from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.
Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
All I know is this: nobody’s very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.
He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.
Movie Trailer for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
About Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey was an American novelist best known for his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He died in 2001 at the age of 66.
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