PEARL, THE

From the author of Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck's The Pearl is a flawless parable about wealth and the evil it can bring, published with an introduction by Linda Wagner-Martin and drawings by José Clemente Orozco in Penguin Modern Classics.

When Kino, an Indian pearl-diver, finds 'the Pearl of the world' he believes that his life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana in church and their little boy, Coyotito, will be able to attend school. Obsessed by his dreams, Kino is blind to the greed, fear and even violence the pearl arouses in him and his neighbours. Written with haunting simplicity and lyrical simplicity, The Pearl sets the values of the civilized world against those of the primitive and finds them tragically inadequate.

John Steinbeck (1902-68), winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for literature, is remembered as one of the greatest and best-loved American writers of the twentieth century. During the Second World War Steinbeck served as a war correspondent, his journalism later collected in Once There Was a War (1958), and he was awarded the Norwegian Cross of Freedom for his portrayal in The Moon is Down (1942) of Resistance efforts in northern Europe. His best-known works include the epics The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952), and his tragic novella Of Mice and Men (1937). John Steinbeck's complete works are published in Penguin Modern Classics.