East of Eden

John Steinbeck's East of Eden retells the old story of Cain and Abel across the fields and small towns of California's Salinas Valley. It follows two families over several generations: the Trasks, beginning with Adam, who heads west after a bruising rivalry with his half-brother Charles, and the Hamiltons, led by the inventive and generous Samuel. When Adam marries a woman whose cruelty runs deeper than anyone around her suspects, the pattern of brothers set against each other begins again in the next generation.

This is a long, roomy novel, full of argument and tenderness, with a narrator who wanders in and out of his own family history. At its centre is a single question: are people bound by what they inherit, or are they free to choose otherwise? It is a big-hearted and morally serious book, the kind of reading that tends to stay with you for years.