As young Jake Horner's mind became an increasingly paralyzing cobweb of dark thoughts, he turned for help to an extraordinary doctor-part saint, part evil-genius, a weird combination of faith healer, magician, and devil. And in so doing Jake found himself following a drastic prescription that was to draw him into a strange, compulsive relationship.

It is around the startling results of Jake Horner's "cure" and its amazing mastermind-a doctor almost surely designed to become one of the most remarkable characters in modern fiction-that this brilliant, imaginative novel hinges. John Barth is a young writer of unusual talent whose uncanny insight into the dark mazes of the human mind has given The End of the Road a haunting and troubling reality.