One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Novel 1962 by US writer Ken Kesey. Set in a mental asylum ruled by the sadistic Big Nurse, the story describes the attempted overthrow of her regime by McMurphy, a rebellious new patient. The conflicts ends with McMurphy's lobotomy and his mercy killing by the narrator, a mute American Indian who escapes into the free world. The novel serves as a broad allegory of the political and social state of post-war America.