All the Pretty Horses

A coming-of-age western set on the US-Mexico Border, All the Pretty Horses is the first instalment of Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed Border Trilogy. ‘His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' – Stephen King, author of the Dark Tower series ‘One of the greatest American novels of this or any time’ – Guardian 1949. At sixteen years-old, John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where dreams are paid for in blood. A classic of American literature and a grand love story, Cormac McCarthy's novel is about the passing of childhood, of innocence and a vanished American age. Adapted into a film starring Matt Damon and Penélope Cruz. All the Pretty Horses is followed in the Border Trilogy by The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.