Pearl S. Buck's epic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a China that was -- now in a Contemporary Classics edition. 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...

A provocative and fascinating exploration of male–female relationships by the Nobel Prize–winning author of The Good Earth.
Pearl S. Buck grew up in China, accustomed to its traditions, but when she moved to the United States as an adult in the 1930s she was struck by the cultural differences in gender roles and expectations. In nine short chapters, she applies this personal experience to an exploration of the power...

The author of The Good Earth tells a poignant story about two boys whose friendship and courage help them survive an overwhelming tragedy. On a mountainside in Japan, two boys enjoy a humble life governed by age-old customs. Jiya belongs to a family of fishermen; his best friend, Kino, farms rice. But when a neighboring volcano erupts and a tidal wave swallows their village, including Jiya's family, life as they know it is changed forever. The orphaned...

A widow's New England peace is interrupted by her feelings for two brilliant men, one much younger and the other quite older-and the dilemma of choosing between them At forty-three, Edith has lost a husband, and has children who have children of their own. Living in a large Vermont house, her days are spent idly reading and playing music. But all of this is to change when two candidates for her affection arrive on the scene. The first is thirty years...

The progress towards women's equality has been hard-won, but the capitalist system has been able to absorb, even incorporate many of these gains to its own advantage, as is shown in Yassamine Mather's essays in this book. Today, the unprecedented global humanitarian crisis, with its wars and mass poverty and starvation, has its greatest impact on women and children, and the particular sensibilities of women are essential to any understanding of and...

On her fortieth birthday, Madame Wu carries out a decision she has been planning for a long time: she tells her husband that after twenty-four years their physical life together is now over and she wishes him to take a second wife. The House of Wu, one of the oldest and most revered in China, is thrown into an uproar by her decision, but Madame Wu will not be dissuaded and arranges for a young country girl to come take her place in bed. Elegant and...

In the small southern town of Chin-kiang, in the last days of the nineteenth century, young Willow and young Pearl S. Buck, the headstrong daughter of zealous Christian missionaries, bump heads and embark on a friendship that will sustain both of them through one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history.

In The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck paints an indelible portrait of China in the 1920s, when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings. This moving story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-Lan is must reading to fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during the last century. Though more than eighty years...

The story is told from the eyes of a traditional Chinese girl, Kwei-lan, married to a Chinese man, a medical doctor, educated abroad. A girl from a traditional upper class home is given in an arranged marriage to a man who has traveled in the western lands and learned European/American ways. Love slowly develops between them as she tries to adapt her cloistered upbringing and traditions to his modern ideas.