Four of Kerouac's essential works in a new collectible series, perfect for taking on the road
A striking reimagining of Jack Kerouac's greatest works, this Penguin Modern Classics collection sees On The Road, Big Sur, The Dharma Bums and Lonesome Traveler in eye-catching new covers.
Designer Tom Etherington took inspiration from New York School abstract expressionist Franz Kline, pairing bold primary colours with broad paint strokes to create four original covers, which emulate the energetic experience of reading the cult author.
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Featuring four paperbacks by Jack Kerouac:
On the Road
'I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else's' Bob Dylan
Sal Paradise, a young innocent, joins his hero, the mystical traveller 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 swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, racing towards the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy and autobiographical passion. One of the most influential and important novels of the 20th century, this is the book that launched the Beat Generation and remains the bible of that literary movement.
Big Sur
Driven mad by three years of endless telegrams, phonecalls, mail, reporters and snoopers in the wake of his hugely successful novel On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 'King of the Beats', needs peace, quiet and sobriety: surrounded and outnumbered he has to 'get away to solitude again or die'. Amidst the wild beauty of the Californian landscape, Kerouac struggles to come to terms with his own myth and its malign impact upon his life. The result is a moving account of a man struggling with inner demons: blessed by great talent and cursed with an urge towards self-destruction - a path lined with double bourbons, Manhattans and scotch ...
The Dharma Bums
Jack Kerouac's classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature.
A witty, moving philosophical novel, Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums is a journey of self-discovery through the lens of Zen Buddhist thought. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Ann Douglas.
Lonesome Traveler
A timeless travelogue from the leading light of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac's Lonesome Traveller is a jubilant celebration of human discovery
As he roams the US, Mexico, Morocco, Paris and London, Kerouac records, in prose of pure poetry, life on the road. Standing on the engine of a train as it rushes past fields of prickly cactus; witnessing his first bullfight in Mexico while high on opium; catching up with the beat nightlife in New York; burying himself in the snow-capped mountains of north-west America; meditating on a sunlit roof in Tangiers; or falling in love with Montmartre and the huge white basilica of Sacré-Coeur - Kerouac reveals both the endless diversity of human life and his own high-spirited philosophy of self-fulfilment.
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