The Grapes of Wrath

The novel that won John Steinbeck the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 endures as his masterpiece.

An extraordinary bestseller and simultaneously a book that caused a storm of controversy, it remains one of the most powerful and persuasive novels of human tragedy and endurance ever written.

The narrative follows the destiny of the Joads, a family of refugee farmers from Oklahoma who abandon the dustbowl to head west, for the fields and orchards of California.

Travelling in a beat-up truck with all their possessions, they are impelled by hope of work, but the promised land turns out to be a world of labour camps, hungry people and broken dreams, the scene of an elemental conflict between migrant workers and company thugs.