After reading Pearl of China about the life of Pearl S. Buck, I felt compelled to re-read Buck’s classic The Good Earth.

Understanding this book in the context of when it was written  and by whom, it is truly remarkable. This novel, published in 1931, was written by a white American woman, in the first person voice of a Chinese male peasant.  Nobody was writing or reading about the lives of Chinese peasants then, or for many decades to come. The fact that Buck could do this so effortlessly is nothing less than astonishing. For this, she won the Pulitzer Prize, and she continued to write numerous novels set in China for the rest of her life.

The quality of the writing is simple and conveys life as it was for the peasant farmer Wang Lung and his family. Through hard work and belief in the richness of the land, he rose above his meager beginnings to great wealth, however he never lost his connection to the land. The treatment of women at the time, even by other women, is difficult to read about. Buck is not trying to make things better than they were, but rather paint a true picture.

There are a lot of people running ‘hither and thither’ throughout the book, along with a lot of other outdated language, but this is what I quite enjoyed about the book. A very worthwhile read in the midst of my fascination with historical fiction set in China.