Illustrated by Gérard DuBois
Multi-layered, violent and beautiful, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is a modern classic justly celebrated in this Folio Society edition, illustrated by award-winning artist Gérard DuBois.
‘A bloody and starkly beautiful tale.’
- The Sunday Times
Brutal and bleak; unique and compelling, Blood Meridian is widely regarded as Cormac McCarthy’s magnum opus, and one of the greatest American novels of all time. An epic western, it explores the spiralling violence suffered by Americans and Indians along the Texas-Mexican border in the mid-19th century. The disregard for life and law on both sides is a reflection on humanity’s destiny, and who among us might control its fate. Having illustrated our best-selling edition of McCarthy’s The Road, artist Gérard DuBois confronts the relentless savagery with surprising grace in his emotive illustrations, while his binding design leaves no doubt as to the hard-hitting nature of the book.
Bound in printed and blocked paper
Set in Maxime
320 pages
Black & white illustrated title-page spread plus 6 colour illustrations
Plain slipcase
9˝ x 5¾˝
‘Unlike anything I have read in recent years, an extraordinary, breathtaking achievement.’
- John Banville
French artist Gérard DuBois’s heart-wrenching illustrations in The Road define our stunning edition and his work will undoubtedly do the same for Blood Meridian. This, the only illustrated edition in print, includes six colour illustrations, which are shockingly violent yet beautiful in their composition and memorable for the meaning they convey. A striking black-and-white title-page illustration is a fitting visual introduction to the narrative, with the horror of death belied by the calm countenance of the young soldier who could almost be mistaken for sleeping.
A modern masterpiece that defies categorisation, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is essential reading. At heart a western, it also draws on far older literary traditions, namely The Odyssey and The Iliad, in which man’s place in the universe is questioned and his fate determined. The violence is immediate and appalling, the detail graphic and, at times, difficult to read. And yet in the context of the era and the settings, it is not gratuitous. Rather, McCarthy’s fully formed characters and lyrical prose convey poignancy and prompt contemplation. Based on historical events surrounding the notorious scalp-hunting Glanton Gang, the novel focuses on the endless cycle of attack and retribution, as white Americans try to decimate the indigenous population, both sides indiscriminate in their bloodletting.
Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road is presented as a Folio collector’s edition, with artist Gérard DuBois’s beautiful and desolate illustrations and Michael Chabon’s New York Review of Books essay. Winner of the Moira Gemmill Illustrator of the Year Prize at the V&A Illustration Awards 2022.
The first illustrated edition of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s phenomenal Half of a Yellow Sun is published by The Folio Society, with a series of stunning watercolours by artist Unyime Edet.
Angie Debo’s comprehensive and compassionate account provides an unrivalled history of American Indians from the dawn of their first contact with Europeans to the late 20th century.
Cormac McCarthy’s sparse and beautiful writing is perfectly mirrored by Gérard DuBois’s hauntingly understated images for this Folio Society edition of the Western thriller No Country for Old Men.
