1991Pulitzer 1992
A Thousand Acres
Jane Smiley · b. 1949 · United States
Why it matters
An Iowa farmer divides his land among three daughters, and King Lear's tragedy resurfaces as buried incest and generational rage. Smiley's Pulitzer winner retells Shakespeare from the daughters' furious, long-silenced point of view.
At a glance
family sagatragedy
Difficulty 5/10medium pace371 pagesA slow-building family reckoning is narrated with mounting, withheld dread.
Deep dive
What the buried truth about Larry does to every act of daughterly rage that came before it, and why Smiley makes Goneril the novel's narrator instead of its villain.
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