What would you do if the world you know turned into a desolate wasteland and you had to fight for your survival and that of your child? This is the premise of the novel The Road (Oprah's Book Club) by American writer Cormac McCarthy, published in 2006 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007.

The Road is a moving and heartbreaking story of a journey. It tells the odyssey of a father and his son who walk alone through a post-apocalyptic America, devastated by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life... Nothing moves in the devastated landscape, except the ashes carried by the wind. It is so cold that the stones crack and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a gun to fend off the lawless gangs that stalk the road, the clothes on their backs, a looted food cart, and each other.

The Road is a relentless meditation on the worst and best we are capable of: ultimate destruction, desperate tenacity, and the love that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation¹. It is a dystopian novel that offers neither consolation nor hope, but instead shows the strength of the bond between father and son, "the whole world for each other".

If you like stories of survival, adventure, drama and reflection on the human condition, we recommend reading The Road (Oprah's Book Club) by Cormac McCarthy. It is a masterpiece of contemporary literature that will make you feel, think and question your own reality.