The Long Walk

The Long Walk is a 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 gruelling walking contest, held annually by a somewhat despotic and 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. Stephen King has revealed that it is the first novel he ever wrote, begun eight years before Carrie was published in 1974, when he was a freshman at the University of Maine in 1966–67.