Short Reign of Pippin IV : A Fabrication

A work of antic political satire from an American master In The Short Reign of Pippin IV, John Steinbeck turns the French Revolution upside down as amateur astronomer Pippin Héristal is drafted to rule the unruly French. Steinbeck creates around the infamous Pippin the most hilarious royal court ever: Pippin’s wife, Queen Marie, who might have taken her place at the bar of a very good restaurant”; his uncle, a man of dubious virtue; his glamour-struck daughter and her beau, the son of the so-called egg king” of Petaluma, California; and a motley crew of courtiers and politicians, guards and gardeners.

John Steinbeck (1902-û1968), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, achieved popular success in 1935 when he published Tortilla Flat. He went on to write more than twenty-five novels, including The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men.
Robert Morsberger, a professor emeritus of English at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, is a Steinbeck specialist who edited Steinbeck-'s screenplay Viva Zapata for Viking/Penguin.
Katharine Morsberger has taught at California State University, San Bernardino.