The Winter of Our Discontent: John Steinbeck (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Steinbeck, Mr John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141186313 ISBN 13: 9780141186313

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2001

Synopsis

Ethan Allen Hawley has lost the acquisitive spirit of his wealthy and enterprising forebears, a long line of proud New England sea captains and Pilgrims. Scarred by failure, Ethan works as a grocery clerk in a store his family once owned. But his wife is restless and his teenage children troubled and hungry for the material comforts he cannot provide. Then a series of unusual events reignites Ethan's ambition, and he is pitched on to a bold course, where all scruples are put aside. Steinbeck's searing examination of the evil influences of money, immorality, greed and ambition on America drew acclaim from the Nobel Committee who hailed him as an 'independent expounder of the truth'.

'Returns to the high standards of The Grapes of Wrath and to the social themes that made his early work ... so powerful'
Saul Bellow, author of Herzog

About this title

Synopsis:

Steinbeck's last great novel focuses on the theme of success and what motivates men towards it. Reflecting back on his New England family's past fortune, and his father's loss of the family wealth, the hero, Ethan Allen Hawley, characterizes success in every era and in all its forms as robbery, murder, even a kind of combat, operating under 'the laws of controlled savagery'.

About the Author:

Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck is remembered as one of the greatest and best-loved American writers of the twentieth century. His complete works will be available in Penguin Modern Classics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0141186313
• ISBN 13: 9780141186313
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288