The Color Purple
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The Color Purple

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  • AuthorAlice Walker
  • PublisherPenguin Classics
  • Pages320
  • ISBN9780143139577

About this book

A touchstone of modern American literature, now a Penguin Classics Black Spine Paperback

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award

Few novels have shaped American literature and culture like Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. In early-twentieth-century rural Georgia, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other after being separated in their youth. Through a series of letters spanning nearly thirty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into a rich and memorable portrayal of Black women—their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, The Color Purple breaks the silence around domestic and sexual abuse and carries readers on an epic and spirit-affirming journey toward transformation, redemption, and love.

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Author: Alice Walker
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published: 2027-06-01
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9780143139577

Praise for this book

The Color Purple was what church should have been, what honest familial reckoning could have been, and it is still the only art object in the world by which all three generations of Black artists in my family judge American art.
Kiese Laymon
A saga filled with joy and pain, humor and bitterness, and an array of characters who live, breathe, and illuminate the world.
Publishers Weekly
Reading The Color Purple was the first time I had seen Southern, Black women’s literature as world literature. In writing us into the world—bravely, unapologetically, and honestly—Alice Walker has given us a gift we will never be able to repay.
Tayari Jones
Places [Walker] in the company of Faulkner.
The Nation
Remarkable expressiveness, color, and poignancy . . . Not only a memorable and infinitely touching character but a whole submerged world is vividly called into being.
The New York Review of Books
Indelibly affecting . . . Alice Walker is a lavishly gifted writer.
The New York Times Book Review

Quoted in excerpt, with attribution. Follow a source link for the full review.