East of Eden

‘There is only one book to a man,’ John Steinbeck wrote of East of Eden. ‘It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years’. Set in the Salinas Valley in California, this powerful, often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families – the Trasks and the Hamiltons – whose generations helplessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Considered by many to be Steinbeck’s masterpiece, this enduring novel, filled with some of Steinbeck’s most memorable characters, has been adapted into a flagship Netflix limited series, directed by Zoe Kazan, with Florence Pugh starring as the beautiful, dangerous Cathy Ames.