Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road,” died at 89. His son, John McCarthy, confirmed his death by natural causes, according to a statement from his publisher. McCarthy was criticized and respected for his morally ambiguous, brutally violent and often bleak novels where men were pitted against primal forces.

He was born Charles McCarthy Jr. on July 20, 1933, in Rhode Island, one of six children in an Irish Catholic family. When he was young, his family moved to Tennessee, where his father worked as a lawyer. In a rare interview with The New York Times, he said his family was considered rich because other families lived in one or two-room shacks.

McCarthy attended the University of Tennessee in the early 1950s but dropped out to join the Air Force. After his service, he returned to school and published two short stories in the student literary magazine before dropping out for good. In 1965, he published his first novel, “The Orchard Keeper,” which won the William Faulkner Foundation Award for a notable first novel. That and his following three books were set in Appalachian Tennessee, heavily stamped by his Southern upbringing.

In 1992, McCarthy achieved widespread acclaim with “All the Pretty Horses,” a best-seller and winner of the National Book Award. It was adapted into a film in 2000, starring Penelope Cruz and Matt Damon, directed by Billy Bob Thornton. Directors Ethan and Joel Coen brought McCarthy more acclaim with their 2007 film adaptation of his book “No Country for Old Men,” starring Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, and Tommy Lee Jones.

The movie won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and even drew the reclusive McCarthy to the Oscars ceremony. In 2013, McCarthy’s first original feature-length screenplay became the movie “The Counselor,” directed by Ridley Scott and starring Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz, and Michael Fassbender. McCarthy is best known for his post-apocalyptic novel “The Road.” Published in 2006, it’s a haunting and bleak tale about a father and son traveling through a desolate landscape wiped out of civilization and most life on Earth.

It would be 16 years until McCarthy published again. He was 89 when he surprised readers with the one-two punch of linked novels “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris” in late 2022, a diptych of existential suffering. McCarthy focused his apocalyptic bent inward on the human soul, peering deep into the broken hearts of a brother and sister cursed by their shared parentage, brilliance and forbidden love for one another.

McCarthy was married and divorced three times and fathered two sons, Cullen McCarthy and John Francis McCarthy. “The Road” is dedicated to the latter.