All the beautiful horses (novel)
All the beautiful horses is a novel by the American writer Cormac McCarthy . The novel is the first volume of the so-called Border Trilogy (Grenzland Trilogy) with the following two volumes Grenzgänger (The Crossing) and Land der Free (Cities of the Plain).
The novel became a bestseller in the US immediately after its publication and won the National Book Award in 1992 . It combines elements of a Wild West novel with those of a romance and is at the same time a typical educational and development novel .
Its title is likely derived from the American lullaby All the Pretty Horses .
content
The protagonist of the story is sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole, who grew up with his grandfather on a ranch in San Angelo, Texas. After the grandfather's death in 1949, the ranch is to be sold. John is actually forced to move to town. Instead, he persuades his friend Lacey Rawlins to go to Mexico with him and the horses to find work as cowboys there. 13-year-old Jimmy Blevins joins the two. He rides a horse that probably doesn't belong to him and he carries a weapon that is stolen from him during a thunderstorm.
After all, in the Coahuila region they find work with a wealthy horse breeder. The two boys manage to tame 21 horses within a short time. The boss is impressed and offers them a permanent position. John Grady falls in love with the patron's daughter Alejandra, seduces her and the two experience a passionate love affair, which they can only live out in secret, since a middle-class Mexican family connects their daughter with a penniless foreigner who is neither social class nor belongs to their culture, would not tolerate it. Meanwhile, Blevins, who killed a man to get his pistol back, has been arrested and has disclosed the names of his two companions to the police. They are arrested by the police on the farm and are to be taken to another location in prison. During the transfer of the three, the police execute Blevins in a wood, the other two have to watch helplessly.
They spend a period of suffering in a Mexican prison, are tortured by the police and beaten up by their fellow prisoners until they are suddenly released, apparently for no real reason. They owe their release to the intervention of Alejandra's family. Rawlins returns to the US while John Grady returns to the farm.
expenditure
- All the pretty horses . New York button 1992.
- German translation:
- All the beautiful horses . Translated by Hans Wolf . Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt 1993. ISBN 978-3-499-22789-9
filming
The novel was filmed in 2000 under the same title All the Beautiful Horses by Billy Bob Thornton .
Radio play version
In 1997 the novel was staged under the same title by Walter Adler for the WDR as a three-part radio play ( adaptation and direction ).