It's been a long road to Cormac McCarthy's next novel. But now, not one, but two are on the way.
The legendary author of The Road and No Country for Old Men, who's widely considered one of the greatest American writers alive, is publishing two new novels this fall, The New York Times reports. The novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, will be connected and published only one month apart.
McCarthy has not published a new novel in the more than 15 years since 2006's The Road, the acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel that won him a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. According to the Times, McCarthy's interlinked new novels will "tell the doomed love story of a brother and sister," whose father helped develop the atomic bomb. The second of the two books, Stella Maris, is reportedly formatted as a transcript of a conversation between one of the siblings, Alicia, and a psychiatric doctor.
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Publisher Reagan Arthur said McCarthy will be "exploring elements of philosophy and some of the bigger life questions more directly on the page" in the books.
"What do you do after you've written The Road?" editor Jenny Jackson also told the Times. "The answer is, two books that take on God and existence."
McCarthy was previously said to be working on a novel called The Passenger, and according to the Times, he delivered drafts of the two books eight years ago — meaning Knopf had to keep details about them secret since then. The Passenger is set to be released on Oct. 25, while Stella Maris will be published a few weeks later on Nov. 22. A box set of both novels will also be sold in December.
