Jack Kerouac (Jean-Louis Lebry de Kerouac, 1922-1969) was an epoch–making writer, a writer of paradox who sowed the wind and did not have time to really find out that he had reaped a storm that has not subsided in our time. Coming from an impoverished family of French aristocrats, he became the voice of protesting American youth and introduced young American intellectuals to Buddhism. Critics arrogantly ignored him, nonconformist readers carried him in their arms. From New York to San Francisco. From San Francisco to Los Angeles. From Los Angeles to New Orleans. From New Orleans? . . Wives and girlfriends, home comforts and attempts to find success and a place in the official literary nomenclature are forgotten. America lies under the wheels of an old car with thousands of roads. With new and new faces, destinies and stories, she appears before two bosom friends — a young writer and a fiery "rebel without a reason." This is the novel "On the Road", first published in 1957. It was smashed to smithereens by critics, but despite this, it became first a national and then an international bestseller. It is rightly ranked among the most iconic books in the history of world literature, is included in the lists of the best works of the twentieth century according to Time, Le Monde, BBC and Observer, and is still sold in huge numbers. But most importantly, for the past seven decades, this book has been inspiring more and more generations of boys and girls who refuse to live by the laws of boring and limited bourgeois morality.