On the road (Penguin Books)

Five decades after it was first published, Jack Kerouac's seminal beat novel "On the Road" finally finds its way to the big screen, in a production from award-winning director Walter Salles ("Motorcycle Diaries") starring Sam Riley ("Control, Brighton Rock"), Garret Hedlund ("Friday Night Lights"), Kristen Stewart ("Twilight"), Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams and Viggo Mortensen.

Sal Paradise ("Sam Riley"), a young innocent, joins his hero Dean Moriarty ("Garrett Hedlund"), a traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat, on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States.

Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the American dream. A brilliant blend of fiction and autobiography, Jack Kerouac's exhilarating novel swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, racing towards the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy and autobiographical passion.

One of the most influential and important novels of the 20th century, "On the Road" is the book that launched the Beat Generation and remains the bible of that literary movement. Jack Kerouac (1922-69) was an American novelist, poet, artist and part of the Beat Generation.

His first published novel, "The Town and the City", appeared in 1950, but it was "On the Road", published in 1957, that made Kerouac famous. Publication of his many other books followed, among them "The Subterraneans", "Big Sur", and "The Dharma Bums".

Kerouac died in Florida at the age of forty-seven. "The most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made aby the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as "beat"' The New York Times 'Pop writing at its best.

It changed the way I saw the world, making me yearn for fresh experience." (Hanif Kureishi, "Independent on Sunday"). ""On the Road" sold a trillion Levis and a million espresso machines, and also sent countless kids on the road.