Author Description

Product Description The only hardcover edition of Jane Smiley's most famous novel--King Lear on an Iowa farm--which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY CONTEMPORARY CLASSICS. With a new introduction.This powerful twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare'sKing Lear centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm among his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will, which sets in motion a chain of events that brings dark truths to light. Ambitiously conceived and stunningly written,A Thousand Acres spins the most fundamental themes of truth, justice, love, and pride into a universally acclaimed masterpiece. Review “Brilliant.... Absorbing.... A thrilling work of art.” —Chicago Sun-Times“A family portrait that is also a near-epic investigation into the broad landscape, the thousand dark acres of the human heart.... The book has all the stark brutality of a Shakespearean tragedy.” —The Washington Post Book World“Powerful and poignant.” —The New York Times Book Review“Superb.... There seems to be nothing Smiley can’t write about fabulously well.” —San Francisco Chronicle“It has been a long time since a novel so surprised me with its power to haunt....A Thousand Acres [has] the prismatic quality of the greatest art.” —Chicago Tribune“Absorbing.... Exhilarating.... An engrossing piece of fiction.” —Time“A full, commanding novel.... A story bound and tethered to a lonely road in the Midwest, but drawn from a universal source.... Profoundly American.” —The Boston Globe From the Back Cover “Brilliant.... Absorbing.... A thrilling work of art.” —Chicago Sun-Times“A family portrait that is also a near-epic investigation into the broad landscape, the thousand dark acres of the human heart.... The book has all the stark brutality of a Shakespearean tragedy.” —The Washington Post Book World“Powerful and poignant.” —The New York Times Book Review“Superb.... There seems to be nothing Smiley can’t write about fabulously well.” —San Francisco Chronicle“It has been a long time since a novel so surprised me with its power to haunt....A Thousand Acres [has] the prismatic quality of the greatest art.” —Chicago Tribune“Absorbing.... Exhilarating.... An engrossing piece of fiction.” —Time“A full, commanding novel.... A story bound and tethered to a lonely road in the Midwest, but drawn from a universal source.... Profoundly American.” —The Boston Globe From the Inside Flap A successful Iowa farmer decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. An ambitious reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear cast upon a typical American community in the late twentieth century, A Thousand Acres takes on themes of truth, justice, love, and pride, and reveals the beautiful yet treacherous topography of humanity. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. At sixty miles per hour, you could pass our farm in a minute, on County Road 686, which ran due north into the T intersection at Cabot Street Road. Cabot Street Road was really just another country blacktop, except that five miles west it ran into and out of the town of Cabot. On the western edge of Cabot, it became Zebulon County Scenic Highway, and ran for three miles along the curve of the Zebulon River, before the river turned south and the Scenic continued west into Pike. The T intersection of CR 686 perched on a little rise, a rise nearly as imperceptible as the bump in the center of an inexpensive plate.From that bump, the earth was unquestionably flat, the sky unquestionably domed, and it seemed to me when I was a child in school, learning about Columbus, that in spite of what my teacher said, ancient cultures might have been onto something