On the Road

Jack Kerouac

Penguin, Aug 20, 2012 - Autobiographical fiction - 296 pages

Sal Paradise, young and innocent, joins the slightly crazed Dean Moriarty on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the American Dream.

A brilliant blend of fiction and autobiography, Jack Kerouac's exhilarating novel defined the new 'Beat' generation and became the bible of the counter culture.

Jack Kerouac's landmark novel, On the Road, beloved by millions around the world for over fifty years, has finally been adapted for the screen. Acclaimed international filmmaker Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) directs a world class cast and crew in a film that feels contemporary while remaining faithful to Kerouac's iconic text.

On the Roadstars Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart, Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge, Alice Braga, Elizabeth Moss, Danny Morgan, Kirsten Dunst and Viggo Mortensen.

On the Roadin Australian cinemas from September 27, 2012.
View the official film trailer, read an extract and more.

'On the Roadsold a trillion Levis and a million espresso machines, and also sent countless kids on the road. The alienation, the restlessness, the dissatisfaction were already there waiting when Kerouac pointed out the road', William Burroughs

'Pop writing at its best. It changed the way I saw the world, making me yearn for fresh experience', Hanif Kureishi

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - steve02476 - LibraryThing

A you-are-there history from a few years before I was born (actually published a few months before i was born). I'm surprised I never read it before, I wonder what effect it would have had on me had I ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - rsairs - LibraryThing

I read this book 50 years ago as a teenager. I bought this copy at City Lights in San Francisco. I still don't understand how something can be so ugly and beautiful at the same time. I still can't figure how lives so degraded could at the same time be so transcendent.

About the author

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922. In 1947, enthused by bebop, the rebel attitude of his friend Neal Cassidy, and the throng of hobos, drug addicts and hustlers he encountered in New York, he decided to discover America and hitchhhike across the country. His writing was openly autobiographical and he developed a style he referred to as 'spontaneous prose' which he used to record the experiences of the Beat Generation. Among his many novels are On the Road, Maggie Cassidy, The Subterraneans, The Dharma Bumsand Big Sur. He died in 1969.

Bibliographic information

• Title: On the Road; Penguin Modern Classics; Penguin classics
• Author: Jack Kerouac
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 2012
• ISBN: 0140265007, 9780140265002
• Length: 296 pages