Title: Cup of Gold

Author: John Steinbeck

Category: Fiction

Page Count: 224

Rating: 3.5/5

This is interesting because it’s essentially historical fiction from John Steinbeck, and I wasn’t aware that such a thing existed. I didn’t enjoy it as much as some of his other stuff, to be fair, but it was still a fascinating insight into the man and his writing, as well as into history.

If you want to learn about Henry Morgan in a fictitious setting then I can’t think of anywhere better to turn, and it’ll also go down quite nicely if you’ve just finished watching that Netflix documentary on piracy that I binged on a week or two back.

But there’s more to this novel than just a story about pirates, and it has a lot to say on a whole heap of different topics including perhaps most notable slavery. The result is that Steinbeck is able to use his historical fiction story to hold a mirror up to the world in which he lived in, and that world doesn’t look too dissimilar from our own world today.

All in all, I’d definitely say that it’s one for the completionists as opposed to people with a casual interest in Steinbeck, but I enjoyed it. It reminded me of Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical stuff.

Learn more about Cup of Gold.