The Grapes of Wrath

by John Steinbeck, Robert DeMott Narrated by Dylan Baker

Overview

John Steinbeck's powerful evocation of the suffering and hardship caused by the Great Depression, and a panoramic vision of the struggle for the American Dream, The Grapes of Wrath includes a critical introduction by Robert DeMott in Penguin Modern Classics. 'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.' Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic The Grapes of Wrath remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of Dust Bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of Tom Joad and his family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel west in search of the promised land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and broken dreams, yet out of their suffering Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human, yet majestic in its scale and moral vision. Adapted into a celebrated film directed by John Ford, and starring Henry Fonda, The Grapes of Wrath is an eloquent tribute to the endurance and dignity of the human spirit. John Steinbeck (1902-68), winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for literature, is remembered as one of the greatest and best-loved American writers of the twentieth century. During the Second World War Steinbeck served as a war correspondent, with his collected dispatches published as Once There Was a War (1958); in 1945 he was awarded the Norwegian Cross of Freedom for his novel The Moon is Down (1942), a portrayal of Resistance efforts in northern Europe. His best-known works include the epics The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952), and his tragic novella Of Mice and Men (1937). John Steinbeck's complete works are published in Penguin Modern Classics. If you liked The Grapes of Wrath, you might enjoy East of Eden, also available in Penguin Classics. 'A novelist who is also a true poet' Sunday Times

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times

Majestic...leaves one feeling that the generosity of spirit he saw in a brutal country is not so much lost as waiting once more to be found.

New York Magazine

The Grapes of Wrath is a lesson in history, stagecraft, and truth that we cannot afford not to learn.

The New York Post

This is, overall, a thrilling theatrical achievement that gets its power from the still sharp relevance of its human message...

NY Times

...majestic...leaves one feeling that the generosity of spirit he saw in a brutal country is not so much lost as waiting once more to be found.

NY Post

This is, overall, a thrilling theatrical achievement that gets its power from the still sharp relevance of its human message...

NY Magazine

THE GRAPES OF WRATH is a lesson in history, stagecraft, and truth that we cannot afford not to learn.

Time Magazine

Steinbeck's best novel.

Peter Monro Jack

It is a very long novel, the longest that Steinbeck has written, and yet it reads as if it had been composed in a flash, ripped off the typewriter and delivered to the public as an ultimatum. Steinbeck has written a novel from the depths of his heart with a sincerity seldom equaled.-- New York Times Books of the Century, 1939

From the Publisher

"It is Steinbeck's best novel, i.e., his toughest and tenderest, his roughest written and most mellifluous, his most realistic and, in its ending, his most melodramatic, his angriest and most idyllic. It is great in the way that Unlce Tom's Cabin was great. One of the most impassioned and exciting books of the year." —Time

"One comes away moved, indignant, protesting, pitying. A fiery document of protest and compassion, as a story that had to be told, as a book that must be read." —Louis Kronenberger, The Nation

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169349047
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	06/15/2011
Series:	Penguin Audio Classics
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Grapes of Wrath"
by .
Copyright © 2006 John Steinbeck.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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