#6 in Classics
East of Eden
- 640
- Pages
- about 12 h
- Reading time
- Film 1955 +2
- On screen
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Our view
“East of Eden” is a family saga on the grand scale, and its real achievement is involvement: after more than six hundred pages the Salinas Valley and its people are hard to leave. The prose does not dazzle every reader, but the pull builds. Its biblical framework is worn openly; some find the moral scheme simplistic and its view of women dated. Suited to those with patience for a long, earnest novel.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
East of Eden is a 1952 family saga novel by American author and Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Many regard the work as Steinbeck's most ambitious novel, and Steinbeck himself considered it his magnum opus. Steinbeck said of East of Eden, "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years"; the author later said, "I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this." Steinbeck originally addressed the novel to his young sons, Thom and John. Steinbeck wanted to describe the sights, sounds, smells, and colors of the Salinas Valley for them in detail.
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen 3 times — from 1955 to 1981.
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.9 across 1,205 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 89% of the weight and the score stays at 8.8 — the Classics average of 7.7 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.2 | 97 | 8% |
| Hardcover | 8.9 | 1.1K | 92% |
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Classics — with scores between 8.6 and 8.9, closest to this book.
