Author(s): Cormac McCarthy

Fiction - General

A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made. In that small apartment, 'Black' and 'White', as the two men are known, begin a conversation that leads each back through his own history - mining the origins of two diametrically opposing world views, they begin a dialectic redolent of the best of Beckett. White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con and ex-addict, is the more hopeful of the men - though he is just as desperate to convince White of the power of faith as White is to deny it. Their aim is no less than this: to discover the meaning of life. Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, "The Sunset Limited" is a beautifully crafted, consistently thought-provoking, and deeply intimate work by one of the most insightful writers of our time. '"The Sunset Limited" grips from the very first page' - "Financial Times". 'The author at his best, meditating on life, suffering and religion' - "Shortlist". 'It's remarkable that Cormac McCarthy could revive the antique genre of the philosophical dialogue as convincingly as he does here. His prose bites' - "Evening Standard".