One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

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*One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest* (1962) is Ken Kesey's debut novel, set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital where rebellious newcomer Randle P. McMurphy challenges the rigid authority of Nurse Ratched Narrated by Chief Bromden, a seemingly deaf-and-mute Native American patient, the novel serves as an allegory against institutional conformity and coercive authority Kesey drew directly from his work as an aide at a Veterans Administration hospital in Menlo Park, California, and his participation as a paid experimental subject taking mind-altering drugs such as LSD The narrative arc builds from McMurphy's disruption of ward routines to his assault on Nurse Ratched after Billy Bibbit's suicide, culminating in McMurphy's lobotomy and Chief Bromden's mercy killing and escape