"Watching the Orchard" Author: [US] Cormac McCarthy Publisher: Henan Literature and Art Publishing House

★ An elegy for the vast wilderness era. The identities of the dead continue to be hidden in myths, legends and dust.

★ The debut work of Cormac McCarthy, a contemporary literary giant, is published in the Chinese world for the first time

★ Old readers should not miss this book, and it is a good introduction for new readers to understand McCarthy's creative aesthetics

The Orchard is the first work of Cormac McCarthy, an important contemporary writer who is known as "the only successor of Hemingway and Faulkner". After its publication, it won the Faulkner Foundation's "Notable Debut Novel" Award. Although it is McCarthy's first work, The Orchard has revealed the exclusive marks of all McCarthy's subsequent popular works: mythical language, vivid character creation, and beautiful and magnificent natural scenery.

Saul Bellow praised "his sentences full of vitality and deadly power, his absolute control over language." The violence and connotations common in McCarthy's novels also appear in a more "gentle" way in this first work, so it is also regarded as his most gentle work. He said: "There is no life without bloodshed. The idea that the species will somehow improve and everyone can live in harmony is really dangerous. Those who are troubled by this idea are the first to give up their souls and freedom. This expectation will enslave you and make your life empty."

McCarthy's works have won the James Tait Black Memorial Award/Faulkner Foundation "Notable Debut Novel"/National Book Critics Circle Award/Pulitzer Prize/Quill Award/National Book Award/MacArthur Award/American PEN Lifetime Achievement Award...

His fans include: Michael Chabon/Harold Bloom/David Foster Wallace/Stephen King/Ridley Scott/James Franco/Tommy Lee Jones/Bruce Springsteen...

◎ Introduction

"Now, they are gone. Escaped, banished by death, exiled, lost, ruined. On earth, the sun still burns the trees and the wind still shakes the grass. No body remains of those people, no descendants, no trace. From now on, their names are myth, legend, and dust on the lips of those who live here."

Between the two world wars, in the remote and desolate town of Red Branch, Tennessee, Marion Heald, who was transporting bootleg liquor for profit, accidentally killed a man who hitched a ride with him and tried to rob him one night, and threw him into a pit in a roadside orchard. Arthur Ownby, the old caretaker of the orchard, found the body and regularly cut a bunch of branches to cover it for several years. A few years later, on another trip to transport liquor, Marion's car broke down and overturned, and he was saved by a little boy, John Wesley Ratner. Marion was John Wesley's father's murderer, but neither of them knew it. For John Wesley, who lost his father at a young age, Marion replaced the role of his father during his growth, and lived happily without knowing their relationship. This sense of happiness was slowly and inevitably eroded by death, decay, and modern civilization over time. John Wesley returned to Red Branch after living in the West for several years, but found that the town had been abandoned and dilapidated. Like Adam and Eve, he can never return to the idyllic childhood that he has lost forever.