The Long Walk

The Long Walk
by Stephen King (As Richard Bachman)

The Long Walk is a dystopian novel by Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1979 as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books, and has seen several reprints since, as both paperback and hardback. Set in a dystopian present, the plot revolves around the contestants of a grueling walking contest, held annually by a totalitarian version of the United States of America. In 2000, the American Library Association listed The Long Walk as one of the 100 best books for teenage readers published between 1966 and 2000. According to Stephen King, it is the first novel he wrote, begun eight years before his novel Carrie was published in 1974, when he was a freshman at the University of Maine in 1966–1967.