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The Passenger
- Author
- Cormac McCarthy
- Narrator
- Julia Whelan, MacLeod Andrews
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- Publish Date
- 25 October 2022
- Run Time
- 12 hours 44 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
A sunken jet, a missing body, and a salvage diver entering a conspiracy beyond all understanding. From the bar rooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtakingly dark novel from Cormac McCarthy, the legendary author of No Country for Old Men and The Road.
‘A gorgeous ruin in the shape of a hardboiled noir thriller . . . What a glorious sunset song’ – The Guardian
1980, Mississippi. It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges into the darkness of the ocean. His dive light illuminates a sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot's flight bag, the plane's black box – and the tenth passenger . . .
Now a collateral witness to this disappearance, Bobby is discouraged from speaking of what he has seen. He is a man haunted: by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima, and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.
One of the final works by Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger is book one in a duology. It is followed by Stella Maris.
Praise for Cormac McCarthy:
‘McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute’ – Anne Enright, author of The Green Road
'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' – Stephen King, author of The Shining
'[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence' – Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain
Critics Review
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An appealing piece of work . . . gripping, with plenty of reflection and evocation
Telegraph
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The Passenger is like a submerged ship itself; a gorgeous ruin in the shape of a hardboiled noir thriller . . . What a glorious sunset song . . . It’s rich and it’s strange, mercurial and melancholic
Guardian
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A moving and characteristically disconcerting addition to the oeuvre of one of America’s greatest writers
Irish Times
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[A] gripping story, written in McCarthy’s trademark acerbic style
i newspaper
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Kafka on the bayou
Observer
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Critics have detected the influence on him of Faulkner and Hemingway, but this is to understate his achievement. The Passenger shows that McCarthy belongs in the company of Melville and Dostoevsky, writers the world will never cease to need
New Statesman
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Details
- Author
- Cormac McCarthy
- Narrator
- Julia Whelan, MacLeod Andrews
- Duration
- 12 hours 44 minutes
- Release Date
- 25 October 2022
- ISBN
- 9781035006762
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- Genre
- Psychological thriller, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Narrative theme: death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: interior life / psychological fiction
Synopsis
A sunken jet, a missing body, and a salvage diver entering a conspiracy beyond all understanding. From the bar rooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtakingly dark novel from Cormac McCarthy, the legendary author of No Country for Old Men and The Road.‘A gorgeous ruin in the shape of a hardboiled noir thriller . . . What a glorious sunset song’ – The Guardian1980, Mississippi. It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges into the darkness of the ocean. His dive light illuminates a sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot's flight bag, the plane's black box – and the tenth passenger . . .Now a collateral witness to this disappearance, Bobby is discouraged from speaking of what he has seen. He is a man haunted: by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima, and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.One of the final works by Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger is book one in a duology. It is followed by Stella Maris.Praise for Cormac McCarthy:‘McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute’ – Anne Enright, author of The Green Road'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' – Stephen King, author of The Shining'[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence' – Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain
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