The Good Earth
Wang Lung is a Chinese farmer who works his land and takes pride in it, and the novel follows him and his wife O-Lan from poverty to a position where the family of the great house nearby is no longer above him.
About
The Good Earth is a novel by the American writer Pearl S. Buck, published in 1931. It is the first book of her House of Earth trilogy, which continues in Sons and A House Divided.
Wang Lung is the farmer at the centre of it. He is humble and hard-working, he takes pride in the soil he farms, and the land gives him back what he puts into it. The novel follows him and his wife O-Lan through a life of work, famine and good fortune.
Nearby, the family of the House of Hwang consider themselves far above the people who work the land, and their position is not as secure as they think. Buck grew up in China as the daughter of American missionaries, wrote the book while she was living there, and drew on what she had seen of village life.
It was the best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1932. It was also part of what led to Buck being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938.
Book details
- Author
- Pearl S. Buck
- First published
- 1931
- Series
- House of Earth, book 1
- Subgenre
- Historical fiction, Modern classics
- Primary genre
- Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction
- Tags
- No tags for this book.
- Reading order
- This is the only House of Earth title on the shelf right now.
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