Art, literature & culture

Publication of The Grapes of Wrath

14 April 1939

The Grapes of Wrath is a novel by the American writer John Steinbeck about the Joad family, tenant farmers from Oklahoma who are driven from their land during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. They travel west to California in search of work, only to meet exploitation, hunger and hostility from landowners and local authorities. The book was a bestseller and was praised for its social realism, though it was also attacked and banned in places for its political content. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and was adapted into a film by John Ford the same year. It was a major reason for Steinbeck's Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

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