The Good Earth

Pearl S. Buck

Aug 2012 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, New York Times–bestselling novel about a peasant farmer and his family in early twentieth-century China.

The Good Earth is Buck’s classic story of Wang Lung, a Chinese peasant farmer, and his wife, O-lan, a former slave. With luck and hard work, the couple’s fortunes improve over the years: They have sons, and save steadily until one day they can afford to buy property in the House of Wang—the very house in which O-lan used to work. But success brings with it a new set of problems. Wang soon finds himself the target of jealousy, and as good harvests come and go, so does the social order. Will Wang’s family cherish the estate after he’s gone? And can his material success, the bedrock of his life, guarantee anything about his soul? Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the William Dean Howells Award, The Good Earth was an Oprah’s Book Club choice in 2004. A readers’ favorite for generations, this powerful and beautifully written fable resonates with universal themes of hope and family unity. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author’s estate.

Ratings and reviews

This book was an awesome read as a kid. It is one of the books that fundamentally changed the way I perceived the impact of property ownership and its impact on economics. I highly recommend this book to whoever has some time on their hands. This book is really about the journey of a farmer. The story tracks marriage, famines, child rearing and more.

I had purchased this book because I was required to for my English class. At first I was uninterested, but now after I finished it, I say to myself, it really was a good book!

Stole this book from jail, stuffed it in the back of my drawers and walked out. It was worth it!

About the author

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) was a bestselling and Nobel Prize–winning author. Her classic novel The Good Earth (1931) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and William Dean Howells Medal. Born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, Buck was the daughter of missionaries and spent much of the first half of her life in China, where many of her books are set. In 1934, civil unrest in China forced Buck back to the United States. Throughout her life she worked in support of civil and women’s rights, and established Welcome House, the first international, interracial adoption agency. In addition to her highly acclaimed novels, Buck wrote two memoirs and biographies of both of her parents. For her body of work, Buck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, the first American woman to have done so. She died in Vermont.