As he roams the US, Mexico, Morocco, Paris and London, Jack Kerouac breathlessly records, in prose of pure poetry, the life of the road. Standing on the engine of a train as it rushes past fields of prickly cactus; witnessing his first bullfight in Mexico while high on opium; catching up with the beat night-life in New York; burying himself in the snow capped mountains of north-west America; meditating on a sunlit roof in Tangiers; or falling in love with Montmartre and the huge white basilica of Sacré Couer - Kerouac reveals the endless diversity of human life and his own high-spirited philosophy of self-fulfillment.

» Visit Penguin's Jack Kerouac website

‘Piquant writing, the best part of its flavour being … the hunt for the big experience, a touch of Hemingway and Whitman’ Guardian

‘Full of startling and beautiful things … one sees, hears and feels’ Sunday Times