The 100 best novels: No 67 – All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)

A compelling story of personal and political corruption, set in the 1930s in the American south

Robert Penn Warren was a southern poet and novelist, the only writer to win Pulitzer prizes for both his fiction and his poetry. In 1986, he was appointed America’s poet laureate.

All the King’s Men is one of American literature’s definitive political novels, as well as a profound study of human fallibility in politics. Set in the 1930s, it describes the dramatic rise to power, as state governor, of Willie Stark, a one-time radical attorney.

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