The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939, which won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature. Set during the Great Depression, the novel follows the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes and bank foreclosures, who set out for California along with thousands of other migrants seeking jobs, land, dignity and a future. It is often listed among the greatest novels in the English language and a contender for the Great American Novel, and remains widely read in American schools for its historical context and enduring legacy.