John Steinbeck, “The Pearl”

A poor diver finds the greatest pearl in the world. Then the world comes to take it.

At dawn, in a brush hut on the shore of the Gulf, Kino listens to the music of his family: his wife Juana grinding corn, his baby son Coyotito asleep in his hanging box, the small waves on the beach. Then a scorpion comes down the rope towards the cradle. Before the morning is over the town doctor has refused to treat the child of a poor Indian, and Kino has gone out in his grandfather’s canoe to dive for a miracle.

He finds it: a pearl as large as a seagull’s egg and as perfect as the moon. In its glowing surface Kino sees everything his people have been denied: a church wedding, new clothes, a rifle, and above all a school for his son. But the news runs through the town faster than any boy can carry it. The priest remembers the church needs repairs. The doctor remembers his patient. The pearl buyers sit in their offices and wait. And in the dark around Kino’s hut, something begins to move.

John Steinbeck heard the story as a local legend in La Paz and turned it into this short, luminous masterpiece: a parable about hope and greed, about the poor and the powerful, about what a dream can cost. Written with the clean force of a folk tale and the visual power of a film, it has been read and loved for generations, and it still has the power to haunt.

John Ernst Steinbeck (1902-1968) was an American novelist, best known for The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which summed up the bitterness of the Great Depression decade and aroused widespread sympathy for the plight of migratory farmworkers. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1962.

Il Disoriente

A paperback and e-book series published by Intra.

Global readability, Italian charm.

• Date of publication: October. 27 2026
• Language: English
• Paperback: 96 pages
• ISBN-13: 979-1259919656
• Weight: 159 g
• Dimensions: 12.7 x 0.56 x 20.32 cm
• Price: (CAN) $ 9,99 (paperback)

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