Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy has died at 89, his publisher Alfred A. Knopf said in a statement Wednesday.

McCarthy won wide acclaim with books like "The Road," "Blood Meridian" and "No Country for Old Men."

He died at his home in New Mexico's capital city Santa Fe. He died of natural causes, his publisher said.

McCarthy grappled dark side of humanity; books turned into movies

McCarthy, raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, was compared to William Faulkner for his Old Testament style and rural settings.

He wrote of the dark side of humanity across stark and forbidding landscapes. McCarthy's own story was one of belated, and continuing, achievement.

He stayed committed to his craft and famously avoided interviews even after he broke through commercially with his book, "All the Pretty Horses," which won the National Book Award in 1992.

"The Road" was a tale of a father and son who roam a ravaged landscape, and brought him his widest audience along with his highest acclaim. The book won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007.

Both of those books were subsequently made into movies.

The Coen brothers adapted McCarthy's crime thriller novel "No Country for Old Men" for the big screen as well, which went on to win an Oscar for best picture in 2008.

rm/jsi (AP, Reuters)