A Thousand Acres

A Thousand Acres
Hardcover first edition cover
AuthorJane Smiley
LanguageEnglish
GenreDomestic Realism
PublisherAlfred A. Knopf
Publication date
October 23, 1991
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages367
ISBN0-394-57773-6
OCLC23941156
813/.54 20
LC ClassPS3569.M39 T47 1991

A Thousand Acres is a 1991 novel by American author Jane Smiley. It won the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 1992 Ambassador Book Award for Fiction, and was adapted to a 1997 film of the same name. It was premiered as an opera by the Des Moines Metro Opera during their 2022 season.

The novel is a modernized retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear and is set on a thousand-acre (four hundred hectares) farm in Iowa owned by a family of a father and his three daughters. It is told through the point of view of the oldest daughter, Ginny.