John Steinbeck (1902- 1968) was born in Salinas, California. He studied at Stanford University and during his youth worked as a laborer and fruit picker. His first success was Tortilla Flat (1935), a story between picaresque and romantic about Mexican immigrants settled around Monterey (California). In 1936, he wrote a series of seven reports for The San Francisco News, which he later published as The Harvest Gypsies. In 1939, his most famous work appeared: The Grapes of Wrath (Pulitzer Prize 1940), which tells the sad story of a family from the impoverished state of Oklahoma that migrates to California during the economic depression of the thirties; this work, received as a moving document of social protest, was adapted into a film by John Ford in 1940. Among his extensive literary work are also the novels Of Mice and Men (1936), The Pearl (1947) and East of Eden (1962), and screenplays for movies, such as the one he wrote for Viva Zapata! by Elia Kazan. In 1962, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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