Kesey could be laying the groundwork for Tom Robbins. Of you don’t like Jack Nicholson, this is not a book for you! After reading the dialogue written for McMurphy (the central character) he is all I could picture. It is almost as if the book were written with Nicholson in mind. I also found it amazing that the movie version is remarkably true to the book. What happened, Hollywood?

Anyway, the central scene is the state mental institution, hence the politically incorrect title. The events are recounted by Chief Broom, a half-breed Indian (pardon, a Native American) who is supposed to be a deaf, mute. The principal action is the escalating struggle between the boisterous, rebellious McMurphy—a new admission—and Nurse Wretched (oops! Ratched)—the head ward nurse (or, Big Nurse as the narrator calls her). The events are inane, McMurphy is comical, Ratched is stoical, but this is no burlesque as you will see as the plot thickens and the supporting cast interacts.

An epic struggle of good against evil, human against machine, willpower against absolute power, pits the archetypal American hero - cowboy, fighter, hustler, gambler - against the cold efficient machinery of power. In the end, you get to decide who won.

One of the greatest American novels.

This book is about a crazy, sexual beast of an Irish guy coming into a mental ward. This ward is controlled by the ever mechanical and freaky Miss Ratched who controls the lives of all the patients by instilling guilt, shame, and other nasty things. She has the power to do almost anything, as everyone is under her control. She also has some handy tools to help her keep the guys calm, but this Irish guy tries to get the best of her and bring her down! It's a great book, and it's very fulfilling. You can feel yourself change by the time you read the entire story! It's a must read.

Life in an asylum through the eyes of a patient paints an interesting picture. When the monotony of the ward's daily life is interrupted by a boisterous new patient, McMurphy, the authoritative Big Nurse knows that her way of running the hospital is threatened. In the all-out psychological battle that ensues, the other patients (our narrator included) are changed forever.

My favorite book!

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An interestin first person account of a mental patients experience. As always, the book was better than the movie, and the movie was great.

This book is very well written. I loved it.

I found this book a bit hard to understand. I didn't get farther than a few pages in before I gave up.

ndal McMurphy in the mental hospital. You know what it's about. A great read, classic. Funny, sad and mischevious.

Who says there was no great literature written on LSD?

Better than the movie. And the movie was good, so that says something about the novel.

Absolutely riveting book.

FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In the early 1960s, fresh out of Stanford's creative writing program, Ken Kesey supported himself by working as an attendant at a psychiatric hospital. It was there that he wrote what became his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which Viking released on February 1, 1962. This hardcover edition, which includes new introductions and more than twenty-five line drawings that Kesey made while composing the novel, commemorates the fortieth anniversary of the publication of this American classic." Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, this is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome power of the Combine. Hailed upon its publication as "a glittering parable of good and evil" (The New York Times Book Review) and "a roar of protest against middlebrow society's Rules and the invisible Rulers who enforce them" (Time), this powerful book is as bracing and insightful today as it was in the 1960s.

In this classic novel of the 1960's, Ken Kesey's hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Big Nurse. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Big Nurse, backed by the full power of authority...McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Big Nurse uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story's shocking climax.

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