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A "powerful and poignant" twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear (The New York Times Book Review) that takes on themes of truth, justice, love, and pride—and centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm between his three daughters.
When the youngest daughter 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. Ambitiously conceived and stunningly written, A Thousand Acres reveals the beautiful yet treacherous topography of humanity.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (6/18/2026)
My NJ book club selected "A Thousand Acres" by Jane Smiley. It won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1992. It's a reimagining of King Lear set in Iowa on the precipice of a disastrous farming recession in the US. The Cook family suffers greatly. The evil patriarch never feels remorse. Only the la...
-Patricia_R
"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
This information about A Thousand Acres was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, Golden Age, the concluding volume of The Last Hundred Years trilogy. She is also the author of five works of nonfiction and a series of books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.
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