Stella Maris (novel)

For the title of Mary, Mother of Jesus, see Our Lady, Star of the Sea.

Stella Maris

Author	Cormac McCarthy
Audio read by	Julia Whelan Edoardo Ballerini
Language	English
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	December 6, 2022
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print
Pages	208
ISBN	978-0-307-26900-3
Preceded by	The Passenger

Stella Maris is a 2022 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy that was published on December 6, 2022.[1] It is a companion novel to The Passenger.[2] It was the final novel published before his death on June 13, 2023.[3] It consists primarily of dialogue with little narration, exploring the nature of the protagonist's delusions and topics such as quantum mechanics and phenomenology.

Plot

The novel follows Alicia Western, a math prodigy conflicted by her father's contributions to the American development of the atomic bomb.[2] The entire novel is set in 1972 in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, at the titular Stella Maris, "a non-denominational facility and hospice for the care of psychiatric medical patients," as stated on page 3 (the only page that is not written in dialogue). The novel consists of a "series of conversations between Alicia and her psychiatrist, Dr. Cohen, written like a play but with no exposition, stage directions, or dialogue tags. The subjects include mathematics, quantum mechanics, music theory, and obscure philosophy."[4]

Development

In a 2009 interview, McCarthy said that he had been "planning on writing about a woman for 50 years".[2]

Publication

Announced in March 2022,[2] Stella Maris was published by Knopf on December 6, 2022,[1] one month after its companion novel The Passenger.[2]

Translations

As of mid-2024, the book has been translated into:

• Czech[5]
• Polish[6]
• Japanese[7]
• German[8]
• Swedish[9]
• Korean[10]
• Spanish[11]
• Norwegian[12]
• Dutch[13]
• Italian[14]
• French[15]
• Portuguese[16]
• Greek,[17]
• Romanian[18]

References

1. Grobar, Matt (March 8, 2022). "New Cormac McCarthy Novels 'The Passenger' And 'Stella Maris' To Be Published By Knopf This Fall". Deadline. Archived from the original on August 3, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
2. Cain, Sian (March 8, 2022). "Cormac McCarthy: two new novels coming in 2022, 16 years after The Road". The Guardian. Archived from the original on August 3, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
3. "Cormac McCarthy, author of The Road, dies aged 89". BBC News. 13 June 2023. Retrieved 13 June 2023.
4. "Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy".
5. Cormac McCarthy (2024). Stella Maris. The Passenger, 2 (in Czech). Argo. p. 200. ISBN 978-80-257-4369-0.
6. Cormac McCarthy (2023). Stella Maris (in Polish). Literackie. p. 268. ISBN 978-83-08-08133-4.
7. Cormac McCarthy (2024). Sutera Marisu ステラ・マリス (in Japanese). Hayakawa Publishing. p. 272. ISBN 978-4-15-210310-9.
8. Cormac McCarthy (2022). Stella Maris (in German). Rowohlt Verlag. p. 240. ISBN 978-3-498-00336-4.
9. Cormac McCarthy (2023). Passageraren; Stella Maris (in Swedish). Albert Bonniers Förlag. p. 678. ISBN 978-91-0-019924-1.
10. Cormac McCarthy (2023). Stella Maris (in Korean). Munhak Dongnae. ISBN 978-89-546-9662-3.
11. Cormac McCarthy (2022). El pasajero / Stella Maris (in Spanish). Literatura Random House. p. 624. ISBN 978-84-397-4070-4.
12. Cormac McCarthy (2022). Stella Maris (in Norwegian). Oslo: Gyldendal. p. 220. ISBN 978-82-05-57704-6.
13. Cormac McCarthy (2022). Stella Maris (in Dutch). De Arbeiderspers. p. 208. ISBN 978-90-295-4753-6.
14. Cormac McCarthy (2023). Stella Maris (in Italian). Einaudi. ISBN 978-88-06-25958-7.
15. Cormac McCarthy (2023). Stella Maris (in French). Éditions de l'olivier. p. 250. ISBN 978-2-8236-1971-3.
16. Cormac McCarthy (2022). Stella Maris (Em Portugues do Brasil) (in Portuguese). Alfaguara. p. 184. ISBN 978-85-5652-162-0.
17. McCarthy, Cormac (2022). Stella Maris. The Passenger (in Greek). Vol. 2. Translated by Greek: Γιώργος Κυριαζής. Gutenberg. p. 263. ISBN 9789600123999.
18. McCarthy, Cormac (2023). Stella Maris (in Romanian). Translated by Iulia Gorzo. Humanitas Fiction. p. 216. ISBN 9786060973249.