John Steinbeck (Salinas, California, USA, 1902) was a very important writer of American literature.
He worked as a war correspondent at the New York Herald Tribunal during World War II. He obtained some success writing humorous pieces set during the Great Depression which then allowed him to write more serious works. After a trip to the Soviet Union, in 1952 he published his most popular novel, The East of Eden. Ten years later, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.