For a “literary” family saga, it’s hard to beat A Thousand Acres, set in Iowa; Jane Smiley’s novel is a modern retelling of the King Lear story. A novel to sweep you up and carry you along as the tragic story of this thousand acres of the best black, densest, deepest earth unfolds.
This powerful twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare's King 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.
'A Thousand Acres is a strong, gnarled shocker of a novel! superb. Its success is down to Smiley's ambitious gusto, her intuitive handling of the relationship between character and landscape, and her willingness to haul genuine moral freight across the panorama she has so expertly painted.' Sunday Times
'Epic fiction of the very highest order, naturalistic , penetrating and wholly absorbing.' Literary Review
'Superlative, extraordinary, amazing. A Thousand Acres is a great American tragedy about the failure of a family's land and the failure of its love. There may have been better novels than A Thousand Acres, but I fear I didn't read them -- a haunting inquisition into the decline and fall of a family.' Independent
'A studied, ingenious variation on the brutal clashing of sexes and generations in King Lear. Its style is relaxed, conversational, unhurried; the novel flows gently onwards like a broad river. In its solidity and poise, A Thousand Acres is a book that will outlast this year's rainy season.' Vogue
'Powerful, poignant, intimate and involving.' New York Times
Author
About Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley was born in LA, grew up in St Louis and studied at Vassar and Iowa. She won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Award in 1992 for 'A Thousand Acres'.
