Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her 1982 novel The Color Purple. By that time she was already a well-established and published writer, but it was the Pulitzer that catapulted her into international recognition. Her books have since been translated into more than two dozen languages, and it was Steven Spielberg's 1985 film adaptation of the novel that brought her to the widespread attention of mainstream audiences. Both the book and the film were controversial, and Walker's fame was accompanied by severe criticism. In The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (1996), a book containing essays, journal entries, letters, and her original, never-used screenplay for the film, Walker addresses the criticism that the film was not true to her book: "Though The Color Purple is not what many wished, it is more than many hoped, or had seen on a movie...