Books like East of Eden

01

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck · Literary fiction

The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's 1939 novel about the Joad family, Oklahoma sharecroppers forced off their land by the Dust Bowl and bank foreclosure, who load everything they own onto a truck and drive Route 66 to California in search of work and a decent life.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck · Literary fiction

Of Mice and Men is a short novel — really a novella — published in 1937, two years before The Grapes of Wrath, and it covers much of the same Depression-era California ground in concentrated form.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl · Psychology

Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's account of his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and the psychological theory he developed from that experience.

A kindred literary fiction read.

04

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · Memoir

Between the World and Me is a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to live in a Black body in the United States.

A kindred literary fiction read.

05

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers · Memoir

Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.

A kindred literary fiction read.

06

Hello Beautiful

Ann Napolitano · Literary fiction

Hello Beautiful follows four generations of the Padavano family, beginning in Chicago in the 1920s and ending in the early 2000s.

Both dig into generational trauma.

07

My Brilliant Friend

Elena Ferrante · Literary fiction

My Brilliant Friend is the first volume of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, following Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo from their childhood in a poor Naples neighborhood in the 1950s into early adolescence.

Both dig into identity and self-invention.

08

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Díaz · Literary fiction

Oscar Wao is an overweight Dominican American nerd from New Jersey who wants nothing more than to find love and write fantasy novels.

Both dig into generational trauma.

09

The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende · Literary fiction

The House of the Spirits begins with Clara del Valle, a clairvoyant child who stops speaking for nine years after a family tragedy and grows up to become the center of a sprawling Chilean family chronicle.

Both dig into generational trauma.

10

The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan · Literary fiction

The Joy Luck Club is structured around a mahjong game.

Both dig into generational trauma.

11

The Lacuna

Barbara Kingsolver · Literary fiction

The Lacuna follows Harrison William Shepherd, a half-Mexican, half-American man who in the 1930s works as a cook in the household of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Mexico City, and eventually becomes secretary to Leon Trotsky during his Mexican exile.

Both dig into identity and self-invention.

12

Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi · Historical fiction

Homegoing begins in eighteenth-century Ghana with two half-sisters who never meet.

Both dig into generational trauma.