A Thousand Acres

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A Thousand Acres is a 1991 novel by American author Jane Smiley. It won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted into a film in 1997.

The novel is a reworking of Shakespeare's King Lear, set on a thousand arce farm in Iowa.

Larry Cook is an aging farmer who decides to divide his farm among his three daughters, Ginny, Rose, and Caroline. The novel differs from King Lear in that it focuses more on Ginny's troubled marriage and her difficulties in bearing a child, and the story eventually reveals the long term sexual abuse by the father of the two oldest daughters. The novel maintains major themes present in Lear, namely: gender roles, appearances vs. reality, generational conflict (the Chain of Being), madness, and the powerful force of nature.

Preceded by: Rabbit At Rest by John Updike (1991 winner)

Pulitzer Prize Winners for Fiction

Succeeded by: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993 winner)