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Guests | October 20, 2009

Vincent McCaffrey: IMG A Practical Matter



It was in a letter of 1897, about his cousin James Ross Clemens, that Mark Twain famously noted that "the report of my death was an exaggeration." He... Continue »
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    Hound: A Mystery

    Vincent McCaffrey

The Good Earth: Oprah Book Club #6

by Pearl S. Buck

The Good Earth: Oprah Book Club #6 Cover

Awards

1932 Pulitzer Prize

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Though more than sixty years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. "I can only write what I know, and I know nothing but China, having always lived there," wrote Pearl Buck. In The Good Earth she presents a graphic view of a China when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings for the ordinary people. This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan is must reading for those who would fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during this century.

Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck traces the whole cycle of life: its terrors, its passions, its ambitions and rewards. Her brilliant novel — beloved by millions of readers — is a universal tale of the destiny of man.

Review:

"The Good Earth has style, power, coherence and a pervasive sense of dramatic reality." New York Times Book Review

Review:

"To read this story of Wang Lung is to be slowly and deeply purified; and when the last page is finished it is as if some significant part of one's own days were over." Bookman

About the Author

Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker was born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Her parents were Southern Presbyterian missionaries, most often stationed in China, and from childhood, Pearl spoke both English and Chinese. She returned to China shortly after graduation from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1914, and the following year, she met a young agricultural economist named John Lossing Buck. They married in 1917, and immediately moved to Nanhsuchou in rural Anhwei province. In this impoverished community, Pearl Buck gathered the material that she would later use in The Good Earth and other stories of China.

Pearl began to publish stories and essays in the 1920s, in magazines such as The Nation, The Chinese Recorder, Asia, and The Atlantic Monthly. Her first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published by the John Day Company in 1930. John Day's publisher, Richard Walsh, would eventually become Pearl's second husband, in 1935, after both received divorces.

In 1931, John Day published Pearl's second novel, The Good Earth. This became the bestselling book of both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize and the Howells Medal in 1935, and would be adapted as a major MGM film in 1937. Other novels and books of nonfiction quickly followed. In 1938, less than a decade after her first book had appeared, Pearl won the Nobel Prize in literature, the first American woman to do so. By the time of her death in 1973, Pearl had published more than seventy books: novels, collections of stories, biography and autobiography, poetry, drama, children's literature, and translations from the Chinese. She is buried at Green Hills Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 5 comments:
absit_invidia, September 12, 2008 (view all comments by absit_invidia)
This is an amazing book. I read it when I was 16 and I've just reread it this year. It's an important classic. I recommend if for every young person!
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(5 of 9 readers found this comment helpful)
teenvougex3, August 25, 2008 (view all comments by teenvougex3)
This book for me was not the most exceptional peice of literature. I had to read this book for my summer reading, and i found most of it difficult to understand. The plot was confusing. I believe that this book would be much more substantial when i am older and i can understand whats going on more. I do not reccomend for under 16 / 17.
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(9 of 13 readers found this comment helpful)
gcorcaigh, October 23, 2006 (view all comments by gcorcaigh)
This book is definitely a good read! Hard to put down, the pages fly past and demand you hear Wang Lung's story. Worth any price put to it.
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(27 of 48 readers found this comment helpful)
View all 5 comments

Product Details

ISBN:
9780743272933
Author:
Buck, Pearl S.
Publisher:
Washington Square Press
Subject:
General
Subject:
Classics
Subject:
General Fiction
Subject:
Married women
Subject:
History
Subject:
Historical fiction
Subject:
China Social life and customs.
Copyright:
Edition Description:
B102
Publication Date:
September 2004
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
368
Dimensions:
8.28x5.36x.91 in. .71 lbs.

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