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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Author(s): Ken Kesey

Location(s): Oregon

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): Mid 20th Century looking back

Location

Content

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electroshock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy’s heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. The subject of an Oscar-winning film starring Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.

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Lead Review

‘Kesey can be funny, he can be lyrical, he can do dialogue, and he can write a muscular narrative. In fact there’s not much better come out of America in the sixties… If you...

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