Ken Kesey - Száll a kakukk fészkére

The publication of Száll a cuckoo's nest in 1962 was received with undivided enthusiasm by its readers and critics, even though it reflects the effects of the bourgeois beat generation, and several of the future ideas of the movement called counterculture, which was taking shape at that time, also run through the novel as a leitmotif. In 1975, Milos Forman directed a film starring Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher, which was recently ranked among the twenty best films by the American Film Institute.

A new patient arrives at a mental institution, the loud, quick-witted and cheerful Randle Patrick McMurphy. He immediately assesses the power relations and sets out to transform the life of the class: he organizes card parties, runs a real betting office, smuggles in drink and women, and even questions the method used in group therapy meetings. Breaking the rules starts as a game, the outcome of which he places bets, but soon turns into a desperate war, in which McMurhpy's opponent is the all-powerful head nurse of the department, the Great Aunt. Due to her authority and position, the Great Aunt has many tools at her disposal, but McMurphy can only rely on her unbridled lust for life, her rogue wisdom and the sympathy of her fellow patients.

In 1962, shortly after the publication of Come to the Cuckoo's Nest, one of the female employees of the hospital where Ken Kesey worked as an assistant at the time the novel was written sued the author and his publisher, Viking Press: according to her claim, one of the novel's supporting characters, the three-time the red cross lady who appeared on the scene was obviously modeled after her by the author. Kesey did not get involved in a legal dispute, but simply rewrote the relevant parts (roughly three pages in total) and replaced the colorfully painted "red cross goose" with the characterless Spokesperson. So in the United States, where the book has gone through more than a hundred editions, only the owners of the first edition can know the novel written according to the author's original intention.
In Hungary, this edition is the first in which the amended text can be read.