The Good Earth

"The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck is a historical fiction novel published in 1931 that tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer, Wang Lung, and his wife, O-lan, as they navigate the challenges and triumphs of family life in a 20th-century Chinese village in Anhwei. The novel follows Wang Lung's journey from being an impoverished peasant to becoming a prosperous landowner, and it explores themes such as marriage, parenthood, complex human emotions, and the Chinese reverence for the land and a specific way of life . The story is set against the backdrop of a changing China and portrays the joys and tragedies of the Chinese peasant farmer and his family. It was the best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932, and was influential in Buck's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938