The Pearl
John Steinbeck, 1947
Historical fiction Literary fictionContemporary fictionMystery, thriller & crime
A poor pearl diver finds the pearl of the world, and it turns his town, his neighbours and himself inside out. Steinbeck's short parable of wanting.
Feels like unease, melancholy and curiosity. About morality, family and ambition.
A page from the book
When your good fortune becomes the reason your neighbours hate you.
Every man suddenly became related to Kino’s pearl, and Kino’s pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man’s enemy. The news stirred up something infinitely black and evil in the town; the black distillate was like the scorpion, or like hunger in the smell of food, or like loneliness when love is withheld. The poison sacs of the town began to manufacture venom, and the town swelled and puffed with the pressure of it. John Steinbeck.Steinbeck first wrote The Pearl as a film script in 1944, after hearing a La Paz legend about a great pearl during a 1940 collecting trip with biologist Ed Ricketts.
Books that feel like this
More by John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck, 1937
Two migrant workers drift through Depression-era California, trading a shared dream of a small farm against the cost of staying together.
East of Eden
John Steinbeck, 1952
Two generations of a California family, a retelling of Cain and Abel, and one Hebrew word that means 'thou mayest.'
Travels with Charley
John Steinbeck, 1962
At fifty-eight, Steinbeck loads a camper with a poodle and drives across America, looking for the country he remembers and testing his own restlessness.
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- What is The Pearl like?
- Feels like unease, melancholy and curiosity. About morality, family and ambition.
- What should I read after The Pearl?
- If you liked The Pearl, try Go Set a Watchman (Harper Lee), The Stranger (Albert Camus) and Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng).
A taste of the feed
The day a parent stops being a god and becomes a person.
As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man’s heart, and a man’s failings—I’ll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes ’em like all of us.
Go Set a Watchman · Harper Lee
The moment a man decides he has nothing left to confess.
I don’t know why, but something inside me snapped. I started yelling at the top of my lungs, and I insulted him and told him not to waste his prayers on me. I grabbed him by the collar of his cassock. I was pouring out on him everything that was in my heart, cries of anger and cries of joy.
The Stranger · Albert Camus
The moment your routine life becomes fundamentally precarious.
No one tells you it’s all about to change, to be taken away. There’s no proximity alert, no indication that you’re standing on the precipice. And maybe that’s what makes tragedy so tragic. Not just what happens, but how it happens: a sucker punch that comes at you out of nowhere, when you’re least expecting. No time to flinch or brace.
Dark Matter · Blake Crouch
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed