The Grapes of Wrath.

The book for which John Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and led to the Nobel prize for Literature in 1962 became a huge best seller on publication. It was buffered about in the political struggles of the day - championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, castigated and banned in California - but it carved out a high place in American literature. As one contemporary reviewer said of it, "it is what Milton would call a 'deed' - the act of a man out of the pity and the wrath of his heart."