The New York Times reported that McCarthy has been fascinated with mathematics and theoretical physics for years, having surrounded himself with experts in both fields at the Santa Fe Institute, a research institute where he has worked for decades. The two novels mark a departure for McCarthy, who has set most of his works in the American south and southwest, exploring humanity’s capacity for good and evil in austere tales of great violence and depravity. “How do we publish in a way that gives readers time to experience each one but also gives readers the satisfaction of experiencing the conversation between the two novels?” “Here we have not one but two novels by pretty much America’s greatest living novelist,” Knopf publisher Reagan Arthur said. When the manuscripts were completed, Knopf considered publishing the books as one volume, both on the same day or a year apart, but settled on a one-month gap. McCarthy’s editor at Knopf, Jenny Jackson, told the New York Times: “It’s a format for Cormac to allow Alicia to explore her obsessions, which from what I can tell happen to be Cormac’s obsessions. “I will never be competent enough to do so, but at some point you have to try.” “I was planning on writing about a woman for 50 years,” McCarthy told the Wall Street Journal in a 2009 interview. The 200-page novel, out on 22 November, follows Bobby’s sister Alicia, “a math prodigy whose intellect frightens people and whose hallucinations appear as characters, with their own distinct voices”.

Stella Maris marks the first time McCarthy has focused on a female protagonist. The 400-page novel has “the pace and twists of a thriller” as Bobby is drawn into the mystery of the crash. He discovers that the black box, the pilot’s bag and one of the dead passengers are all missing. The Passenger, published on 25 October, opens as Bobby, a salvage diver working on the Gulf Coast in 1980, explores the wreckage of a sunken jet.

McCarthy had delivered a full draft of one of the novels to his editors eight years ago, kept secret at the publishing house. On Tuesday evening, US publisher Knopf revealed McCarthy had the two books coming in 2022.

Mccormack the road