CLIL LITERATURE JOHN STEINBECK, THE VOICE OF AMERICAN RURAL WORKERS John Steinbeck (1902-1968) was born in Salinas, California, in a middle-class family. He attended Stanford University but left without graduating. In 1925 he went to New York, hoping to start a career as a journalist, but he failed and returned to California in 1927. After publishing some novels and short stories, Steinbeck first became widely known with Tortilla Flat (1935). Steinbeck s novels can all be classified as social novels dealing with the economic problems of rural workers. After the humor of Tortilla Flat, he moved on to more serious fiction with the novel In Dubious Battle (1936), which deals with the strikes of the migratory fruit pickers on California plantations. This was followed by Of Mice and Men (1937), one of his best works, and John Steinbeck a series of short stories collected in the volume The Long Valley (1938). In 1939 he published what is considered his masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. His later works are East of Eden (1952), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), and Travels with Charley (1962). He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. John Steinbeck died in New York City in 1968. The Grapes of Wrath is set in the Great Depression and describes the migration of a family of small farmers, the Joads, from their land in the Midwest to the promised land of California because of the Dust Bowl. The book was very popular with readers but some critics found the novel too sympathetic to the workers troubles, the poor and social outcasts, and too critical of capitalism. The novel won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1940 and was adapted as a film directed by John Ford in the same year. outcast: emerginato fruit picker: raccoglitore di frutta grapes: grappoli strike: sciopero sympathetic: solidale, favorevole wrath: ira, furore The Grapes of Wrath, original movie poster