Of Mice
and Men:
Written by: John
Steinbeck
Narrated by: Gary
Sinise
Listen
Time: 3 Hours 11 Minutes
Celebrating its 75th anniversary, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men remains one of America's most widely read and
beloved novels. Here is Steinbeck’s dramatic
adaptation of his novel-as-play, which received the New York Drama Critics’ Circle
Award for Best Play in 1937-1938 and has featured a number of actors who have
played the iconic roles of George and Lennie on stage and film, including James
Earl Jones, John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. From the Nobel Prize-winning author
of The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, this classic story of an unlikely pair, two
migrant workers in California during the Great Depression who grasp for their
American Dream, profoundly touches readers and audiences alike. George and his
simple-minded friend Lenny dream, as drifters will, of a place to call their
own—a couple of acres and a few pigs, chickens, and rabbits back in Hill
Country where land is cheap. But after they come to work on a ranch in the
fertile Salinas Valley of California, their hopes, like “the best laid schemes o’mice an’ men,” begin to go
awry.
Of Mice and Men also represents an experiment in form, as
Steinbeck described his work, “a kind of playable novel, written in novel form
but so scened and set that it can be played as it
stands.” A rarity in
American letters, it achieved remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play,
and three acclaimed films.