Publication Order of The Border Trilogy Books
| All the Pretty Horses | 1992 |
| The Crossing | 1994 |
| Cities of the Plain | 1998 |
Publication Order of The Passenger Books
| The Passenger | 2022 |
| Stella Maris | 2022 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Orchard Keeper | 1965 |
| Outer Dark | 1968 |
| Child of God | 1973 |
| Suttree | 1979 |
| Blood Meridian | 1985 |
| No Country for Old Men | 2005 |
| The Road | 2006 |
Publication Order of Plays
| The Stonemason | 1994 |
| The Sunset Limited | 2006 |
About Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy (1933 to 2023) was an American novelist who wrote twelve novels, along with plays and screenplays, in the Southern Gothic, Western and post-apocalyptic genres. He is best known for “Blood Meridian”, the Border Trilogy, “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road”, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007.
He was born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr. in Providence, Rhode Island, on 20 July 1933, one of six children, and grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where his father worked as a lawyer for the Tennessee Valley Authority. He enrolled at the University of Tennessee in 1951 but dropped out to join the US Air Force. His first novel, “The Orchard Keeper”, was published in 1965. Literary grants allowed him to travel to southern Europe, where he wrote “Outer Dark” (1968). His early novels, including “Suttree” (1979), were generally well reviewed but did not sell.
A MacArthur Fellowship enabled him to travel to the American Southwest, where he researched and wrote “Blood Meridian” (1985). It had a lukewarm reception at first and has since come to be regarded as his major work. Wide success arrived with “All the Pretty Horses” (1992), which won both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. “The Crossing” (1994) and “Cities of the Plain” (1998) completed the Border Trilogy.
His writing is marked by sparse punctuation and graphic depictions of violence. “The Road” (2006) also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. The Coen brothers’ 2007 film of “No Country for Old Men” won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and “All the Pretty Horses”, “The Road” and “Child of God” have also been filmed. His play “The Sunset Limited” was adapted for HBO in 2011, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson.
McCarthy worked with the Santa Fe Institute, for which he wrote the essay “The Kekulé Problem” (2017) on the unconscious and the origin of language. His final novels, “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris”, were published in October and December 2022, sixteen years after “The Road”. Both follow the siblings Bobby and Alicia Western, whose father helped develop the atomic bomb. He died at his home in Santa Fe on 13 June 2023, aged 89.
Photo: David Styles, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).