Una fascinante historia sobre de la lucha entre el bien y el mal, en un mundo en donde los buenos no siempre ganan.
En mitad de la noche en un barrio tranquilo de Minneapolis raptan a Luke Ellis, de doce anos, tras haber asesinado a sus padres. Una operacion que dura menos de dos minutos. Luke se despierta en E Instituto, en un cuarto exactamente igual que el suyo pero sin ventanas. En habitaciones parecidas hay mas ninos: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris y Avery Dixon, entre otros, que comparten capacidades especiales como la telequinesia o la telepatia. Todos ellos se alojan en la Mitad Delantera de la institucion. Los mayores, en cambio, se encuentran en la Mitad Trasera. Como dice Kalisha: "El que entra no sale".
En este instituto tan siniestro, la directora -la Senora Sigsby-y sus empleados, se dedican a extraer la fuerza supernatural de cada uno de los ninos, siempre de una manera despiadada y sin escrupulos. Si los ninos cooperan, ganan monedas para las maquinas de dulces. Pero si no, el castigo es brutal. Cada vez que una victima desaparece, Luke se encuentra mas desesperado por escapar y buscar ayuda. Pero nunca nadie ha logrado escapar del Instituto…
"Bajo los fuegos artificiales de su imaginacion incansable, Stephen King nos muestra en sus mejores novelas que lo raro, lo extraordinario, lo verdaderamente insolito es vivir". --El Mundo
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King, the most riveting and unforgettable story of kids confronting evil since It. "This is King at his best" (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch).
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis's parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents-telekinesis and telepathy-who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, "like the roach motel," Kalisha says. "You check in, but you don't check out."
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don't, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute "is another winner: creepy and touching and horrifyingly believable, all at once" (The Boston Globe).
