The Grapes of Wrath

The epic work of John Steinbeck, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read, this Penguin Classic, first published in 1939, has galvanized and sometimes outraged millions of readers.

The novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. It is a portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man's fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman's stoical strength. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck's powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

Penguin Classics, the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, has more than 1,800 titles, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

This Penguin Classics edition of Steinbeck's epic contains an introduction and notes by Steinbeck scholar Robert Demott. Out of the trials and repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.

product information: