East of Eden

John Steinbeck

Penguin, 2002 - Fiction - 601 pages

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. Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new, rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives, nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness, enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

Contents

• II: 3
• III: 8
• IV: 14
• V: 33
• VI: 37
• VII: 44
• VIII: 54
• IX: 71
• X: 89
• XI: 99
• XII: 109
• XIII: 125
• XIV: 127
• XV: 130
• XVI: 146
• XVII: 154
• XVIII: 174
• XIX: 182
• XX: 201
• XXI: 215
• XXII: 226
• XXIII: 238
• XXIV: 250
• XXV: 271
• XXVI: 273
• XXVII: 290
• XXVIII: 308
• XXIX: 324
• XXX: 331
• XXXI: 349
• XXXII: 360
• XXXIII: 367
• XXXIV: 378
• XXXV: 386
• XXXVI: 397
• XXXVII: 409
• XXXVIII: 411
• XXXIX: 414
• XL: 418
• XLI: 428
• XLII: 440
• XLIII: 448
• XLIV: 463
• XLV: 471
• XLVI: 480
• XLVII: 483
• XLVIII: 490
• XLIX: 498
• L: 513
• LI: 517
• LII: 522
• LIII: 529
• LIV: 545
• LV: 556
• LVI: 570
• LVII: 579
• LVIII: 586
• LIX: 592

About the author

No writer is more quintessentially American than John Steinbeck. Born in 1902 in Salinas, California, Steinbeck attended Stanford University before working at a series of mostly blue-collar jobs and embarking on his literary career. Profoundly committed to social progress, he used his writing to raise issues of labor exploitation and the plight of the common man, penning some of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century and winning such prestigious awards as the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He received the Nobel Prize in 1962, "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.

Bibliographic information

• Title: East of Eden; John Steinbeck centennial edition; Oprah Book Club; Penguin Readers; Steinbeck's Centennial Series; Volume 132 of The Library of America
• Author: John Steinbeck
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 2002
• ISBN: 0142000655, 9780142000656
• Length: 601 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Literary