# East of Eden - Paperback

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by **John Steinbeck** (Author), **David Wyatt** (Introduction by)

**Soon to be a Netflix series starring Florence Pugh**

**The masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years--at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis**

**A Penguin Classic**

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. Here 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 a touchstone of American literature for over half a century.

This edition includes selections from _Journal of a Novel: The "East of Eden" Letters_ by John Steinbeck to his longtime Viking editor Pascal Covici, and recommended resources, adaptations, and parallel texts for readers to explore and discuss.

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

### Author Biography

**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.

**Number of Pages:** 656

**Dimensions:** 1.13 x 7.75 x 5 IN

**Publication Date:** October 01, 1992

**Accelerated Reader:**

**Quiz Name:** East of Eden

**Interest Level:** Upper Grades, 9-12

**Reading Level:** 5.3

**Point Value:** 34

## Details

- **Price:** 20.0 USD
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- **Type:** Books
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## Variants

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- East of Eden - Paperback
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