A group known as the Glanton gang hunt Indigenous Americans, collecting scalps as their bloody trophies. At the centre of this violence stands Judge Holden: a massive, hairless man, mysterious if not supernatural, erudite and cold-blooded. He is singularly extreme in his sadistic violence.
But the apparent chaos is not without order - the Glanton gang, too, are stalked as prey. Read as both a brilliant subversion of the Western novel and a blazing example of that form, it is a powerful, mesmerizing and savagely beautiful novel - and one of the most important works in American fiction of the last century. 'In Blood Meridian, McCarthy reaches the peak of his style: spare and ornate at once, repetitious but endlessly readable' - GuardianPraise for Cormac McCarthy:'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' - Stephen King, author of The Shining and the Dark Tower series'McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute' - Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and The Wren, The Wren'[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 MountainPart of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.