Alice Walker’s 'The Color Purple' (1982) is a celebrated example of an 'epistolary' novel—a story told through a series of documents, usually letters. In this case, the protagonist, Celie, writes letters to God and later to her sister Nettie to cope with the trauma and abuse she experiences in the early 20th-century American South. This format allows the reader an intimate look at Celie’s developing voice and her eventual empowerment. The novel won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award, making Walker the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer in that category. The book’s themes of female solidarity, resilience, and the search for a personal spirituality have made it a modern classic, later adapted into a successful film and a Broadway musical.