NEW YORK (AP) — Before Wednesday, few could have imagined the names “Oprah Winfrey” and “Cormac McCarthy” appearing in the same sentence.McCarthy, one of the country’s most revered and press-shy authors — a man only slightly more accessible than J.D. Salinger — will give his first ever television interview, lured by the long arm of Winfrey, publishing’s biggest hit-maker and a media superstar.

Winfrey announced Wednesday on her Chicago-based TV show that McCarthy’s “The Road” was her new book club pick.

“Mr. McCarthy respects her work, admires what she has accomplished, has an awareness of her book club, and thought it would be interesting to participate in the conversation with Oprah,” McCarthy’s publicist, Paul Bogaards of Alfred A. Knopf, told The Associated Press. “He knew who she was when she called.”

In selecting “The Road”, not only will Winfrey meet with an author who, according to Bogaards, has given just two interviews in the past 40 years, but she has taken on a novel with little of the uplifting spirit she often favours.

“The Road”, published last September by Knopf, is a sparely written story of a father and son trying to survive as they wander through a burned and bare, post-nuclear landscape. Praised almost universally by reviewers, it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle prize and is considered a leading contender for the Pulitzer Prize.

“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever chosen as a book club selection before because it’s post-apocalyptic. (It is) very unusual for me to select this book, but it’s fascinating,” Winfrey said on her show.

McCarthy, 73, is known for novels such as “All the Pretty Horses” and “Blood Meridian”, and has been widely cited as an heir to William Faulkner for his biblical prose and rural settings, yearning back to a time when television itself, much less TV talk shows, was unthinkable. He has been called too sentimental, but critic Harold Bloom, famous for his discernment, regards McCarthy as one of the greatest living American writers, along with Don DeLillo, Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon.

“That shows good taste on her part,” Bloom said of Winfrey’s choice.

Winfrey has taken on harsher stories before, such as Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust classic, “Night”, and, notoriously, James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces”, a memoir of addiction and recovery that turned out to be largely fabricated.

In the coming weeks, the reclusive McCarthy, who did not appear on Wednesday’s show and who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, will conduct his “first television interview ever,” Winfrey said.

“It’s a bit of a surprise, but a wonderful surprise,” McCarthy’s editor, Knopf president Sonny Mehta, told the AP. “This is good news for those of us who have been in the Cormac McCarthy business for a very long time.”

“The Road” is one of McCarthy’s most popular books, spending several weeks on numerous best seller lists. According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of industry sales, it has sold 138,000 copies in hardcover. Thanks to Winfrey, that total should increase by hundreds of thousands. A paperback was not planned until September, but Vintage Books, understandably, is publishing one now, with a massive first printing of 950,000 copies.

“It’s going to be a big year for Cormac,” said Mehta, noting the planned release later this year of the Coen brothers film, “No Country for Old Men,” based on the McCarthy novel of the same name.