The Sunset Limited: a Novel in Dramatic Form

Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, The Sunset Limited is a beautifully crafted play from the legendary Cormac McCarthy, author of No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian.

‘The Sunset Limited grips from the very first page’ – Financial Times

A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made.

In that small apartment the two men, known as ‘Black’ and ‘White’, begin a conversatino that leads each back through his own history.

White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con in recovery for drug addiction, is the more hopeful of the men. He is, however, desperate to convince White of the power of faith – while White is desperate to deny it.

Between them, they hope to discover the meaning of life itself.

Praise for Cormac McCarthy:

‘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

‘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

‘[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