约翰·斯坦贝克（John Steinbeck，1902—1968），美国作家，1962年诺贝尔文学奖得主。他的作品多描写底层的社会大众，展现他们广阔壮丽的生活图景，刻画他们面对困境时所展现出的人性光辉。代表作有《人鼠之间》《愤怒的葡萄》《伊甸园之东》等。

      《人鼠之间》讲述了二十世纪30年代美国经济大萧条时期，两个一贫如洗却又相依为命的美国流动农业工人佐治和李奈从怀揣梦想、追逐梦想、接近梦想到梦想破灭的悲惨故事，艺术地展现了田园牧歌式的农庄生活和残酷的社会现实的冲突，反映了人对生存条件的真切感受

      A FEW MILES south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees— willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them. Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of ’coons, and with the spread pads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.

      There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from the highway in the evening to jungle-up near water. In front of the low horizontal limb of a giant sycamore there is an ash pile made by many fires; the limb is worn smooth by men who have sat on it.