East of Eden

· Sold by Penguin
4.6
392 reviews
Ebook
608
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors, in a commemorative hardcover edition
 
In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. Adapted for the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan introducing James Dean, and read by thousands as the book that brought Oprah’s Book Club back, East of Eden has remained vitally present in American culture for over half a century.

Ratings and reviews

4.6
392 reviews
Chris Morris
November 25, 2017
East of Eden details the story of mutiple families whose lives tragically intertwine over multiple generations. There are characters to love, such as Sam Hamilton. There are characters to hate, such as Catherine. There are characters to weep for, such as Adam. And there are characters to fear (and weep) for, such as Cal. The story mainly shows the brokenness of humanity, with flecks of beauty mixed in (Lee, for example). It is a story of longing and lostness, hatred and love. There wasn't much redemption at the end and most of the characters were not admirable. But the story was engaging and it helped me to feel a bit more in touch with the pain that people experience.
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Buddy Hatfield
August 13, 2015
John Steinbeck's epic story centers around the theme of good versus evil. His style of inserting descriptive chapters of social conditions and conventions in between the narrative makes reading the first third of this book more of a chore than it should be. As the story progresses his descriptions become less and more contained, allowing the reader to speed along like a steam engine and enjoy an amazing journey populated with vivid and memorable characters. Well worth the time spent reading.
16 people found this review helpful
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Nicole Gunn
August 18, 2018
A good classic based on the Cain and Able story. There are three parts to this that span three generations. I felt that there are some very quotable sections and great parts surrounded by lots of filler that dragged the story a bit. But it was still a good book.
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About the author

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) born in Salinas, California, grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast. Both the valley and the coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree. During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929).

After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California books, The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with Tortilla Flat (1935), stories about Monterey’s paisanos. A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). The Grapes of Wrath won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.

Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with The Forgotten Village (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with Sea of Cortez (1941). He devoted his services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the controversial play-novelette The Moon is Down (1942). Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1948), another experimental drama, Burning Bright (1950), and The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951) preceded publication of the monumental East of Eden (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his own family’s history.

The last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely. Later books include Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957), Once There Was a War (1958), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961),Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962), America and Americans (1966), and the posthumously published Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969), Viva Zapata! (1975), The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976), and Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (1989).

Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, and, in 1964, he was presented with the United States Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968. Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.

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