Tortilla Flat – Usado

They loafed and drank and loved and stole -that was life for the paisanos of Tortilla Flat, and they lived it with innocence and dedication. With the magic touch of a great storyteller, John Steinbeck has made the saga of Danny and his friends into a deeply compassionate, uproariously amusing, unforgettable novel.

Adopting the structure and themes of the Arthurian legend, Steinbeck created a “Camelot” on a shabby hillside above the town of Monterey, California and peopled it with a colourful band of knights. At the center of the tale is Danny, whose house, like Arthur’s castle, becomes a gathering place for men looking for adventure, camaraderie, and a sense of belonging. These “knights” are paisanos, men of mixed heritage, whose ancestors settled California hundreds of years before. Free of ties to jobs and other complications of the American way of life, they fiercely resist the corrupting tide of honest toil in the surrounding ocean of civil rectitude.