The Grapes of Wrath: Penguin Modern Classics

by John Steinbeck

Brought to you by Penguin.

'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, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl era Oklahoma in search of the promised land of California. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and powerlessness, yet out of their struggle Steinbeck created a drama that is both intensely human and majestic in its scale and moral vision.

John Steinbeck 1939 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Genres: Classics

Audible Audio

Published February 24, 2022

About the author

John Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters."
During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward F. Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.

Reviews

[neha · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was after a long time that I had to close the book and sit in silence for a minute after finishing it.
A human orchestrated tragedy that has been brutally captured by Steinbeck, without any butchering of the stark reality or unnecessary valourisation. Every page left me rattled to my core, in awe and simultaneously in shock. The sheer rawness of the human condition has never been more stunningly written about. Reads like poetry, tears your soul apart.
The ending is going to haunt me for a while.

[Tyler Horton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still powerful, even timely right now. Richard Armitage's reading is fantastic.