John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 — a novel about a farm family driven off the land by drought and by the banks. The book was banned and burned. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and later the Nobel.
He was born in Salinas, California, in 1902, and worked on farms, in laboratories, on building sites — his material came straight from life. Of Mice and Men (1937): two labourers dream of a patch of land of their own. One is clever and kind; the other big and strong, and childlike. The dream is destroyed.
East of Eden is a family saga built on the Book of Genesis; The Winter of Our Discontent was the last novel published in his lifetime. The Nobel Prize came in 1962.
American critics greeted the award coldly, convinced his best work was behind him. Steinbeck died in 1968. The California valley remained in his prose for good.