The Road

Cormac McCarthy strips his story to essentials: a father and his young son push a cart south through a gray, ash-covered America after an unnamed catastrophe has killed almost everything. They scavenge, hide from other survivors, and hold onto what the father calls carrying the fire. Written in stark, pared-down prose, the Pulitzer-winning novel is bleak and tender at once, a meditation on love and endurance at the end of the world.