No Country for Old Men

McCarthy strips the novel of all ornamentation — no quotation marks, no conventional dialogue paragraphs — and what remains is pure violence and absolute fatalism. Anton Chigurh is the most unsettling villain in contemporary American literature because he acts not from hatred but from principle. The book leaves you exhausted and thinking. This is not entertainment in the usual sense: it is an experience that questions whether justice exists in the world. For those who can endure the demands it makes.