KQED Public Radio's Forum presents California Reading, a radio book club featuring fiction about California and by California authors. Each month, listeners are invited to read a selected book and share their thoughts online and during a special hour of Forum.
November 2004 Book
Selection: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey
From the publisher:
An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was one of the defining works of the 1960s. A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything she stands for quickly turns from sport to a fierce power struggle, with shattering results.
From the publisher:
Ken Kesey studied writing at Stanford University with Wallace Stegner and Malcolm Cowley. His novels include Sometimes a Great Notion, Sailor Song, and Last Go Round, as well as two children's books and several works of nonfiction.
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