East of Eden

The masterpiece by John Steinbeck, one of the most important authors in the United States and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, East of Eden is at once a family saga and a modern transposition of the Book of Genesis.

In his diary, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden his "first book." Indeed, it possesses the primal energy and simplicity of a myth. Set in the fertile fields of California's Salinas Valley, this grand and at times brutal book follows the intertwined fates of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose respective generations helplessly relive the fall of Adam and Eve and the deleterious rivalry of Cain and Abel.

Coming from the East, Adam Trask arrives in California to work on plantations and raise his family in this new land full of promise. However, the birth of twins, Caleb and Aaron, drives his wife to the brink of madness, leaving Adam to raise their two sons. While Aaron grows up emanating love for all things around him, Caleb remains lonely, shrouded in a mysterious fog, believing his father cares only for his brother. And the eternal tension between the twins is further exacerbated when they fall in love with the same woman. It's a tragedy waiting to happen.

Originally published in 1952, in East of Eden, Steinbeck developed his most fascinating characters and explored the most recurring themes of his work: the mystery of identity, the ineffability of love, and the devastating consequences of the absence of affection. A masterpiece of the American author's maturity, this is a powerful and ambitious novel, at once a family saga and a modern transposition of the Book of Genesis.