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This is no Bible; this is a terribly precise and cruel description of the Apocalypse. And it’s done by Stephen King, not just anyone. A writer who has terrorized generations of readers, a man who destroyed my teenage nights (some spend them doing obscene things, while others like me spend them reading; everyone spends them as they see fit, you know). I haven’t yet read anything more engaging and thrilling since the day I walked into a bookstore in my town (the only one, to tell the truth) and bought a copy of this immense masterpiece, still intact in its beauty and its ability to shock.
It's simply a description of the end of the world and the subsequent struggle among the few survivors. A lethal virus, created by the American government in a secret laboratory in the middle of the Nevada desert, USA, escapes military control and spreads through the air like a wind of death. It’s a matter of hours: the virus has an infection rate of 99.4% and a mortality rate of 100%. There are no vaccines. The United States is soon engulfed by what is called "Captain Trips," or "the super-flu." Initial symptoms: just a simple flu. Cough, heavy and glassy eyes, fever, cold. As hours pass, the fever increases, mucus clogs the airways up to suffocation. The book never explicitly states whether Captain Trips spreads across the entire planet, but many clues suggest that the situation is indeed global and not only concerns the United States of America. The post-apocalypse, with the consequent attempt to rebuild society, is the true representation of the eternal struggle between Good and Evil: King divides the few survivors (without ever explaining why they are survivors) between those who decide to rely on the good Mother Abagail, a black clairvoyant endowed with supernatural powers living in the wheat fields, and those who instead choose as their leader the wicked, cruel, diabolical Randall Flagg, also known as the Dark Man, the Devil himself, also endowed with extrasensory powers; a character we find in other King stories (in the series "The Dark Tower" and the novel "The Eyes of the Dragon") but who only in this novel expresses all his immense and ruthless desire to conquer the world.
In the over thousand pages of the novel, the battle between Good and Evil is told through the journey of many survivors, an element that allows King to portray a humanity that is now adrift, populated by people who are very different from each other. These journeys are wonderful, journeys I personally followed with a map of the United States while reading (I recommend doing this to better understand the unfolding events; truth be told, I tracked the different journeys on the map with different colors to avoid confusion, but I think not everyone is as schizophrenic as me, so you’re not obliged). Descriptions of stunning landscapes, meetings in nightmare locations, characterizations of unforgettable characters (the pregnant student Frances Goldsmith, the wonderful Stuart Redman, the deaf-mute Nick Andros) make the novel something that will be hard to forget.
The novel concludes with the final clash of the two groups of survivors led by their respective leaders, a clash taking place in a deserted and silent Las Vegas. Fire is the main element of this battle, read to believe.
"The Stand" was originally published in 1978, with many fewer pages, but in 1990, 12 years later, Stephen King decided to publish a new version, this time complete, which is obviously the one to be considered and the one to be read, because the story of an Apocalypse and a terrible epic like the one narrated in the novel cannot be summarized in a few words. It must be read in its entirety, but above all, if you manage to, it must be lived.
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