The Pearl

The Pearl is a work by the American author John Steinbeck, first published as a short story in 1945 and later as an expanded novella, in 1947. The story follows a pearl diver named Kino and examines the purpose of a man's life alongside greed, the defiance of social norms and evil.

Steinbeck's source was a Mexican folk tale from La Paz in Baja California Sur, which he heard during a visit to the formerly pearl-rich region in 1940. That origin is why the book is usually read as a parable rather than as a realistic novel, and it is one of his most popular works as well as one of the most widely taught in American schools. The book examines what the pearl does to the family's standing rather than only what it is worth, which is why the folk-tale origin suits the material.

The book was adapted as a Mexican film titled La Perla in 1947 and as a Kannada-language film, Ondu Muttina Kathe, in India in 1987. Its first life as a short story and its later expansion into a novella are why it reads so compactly, with the parable never padded out by subplot.