The Good Earth
Peasant family saga
*The Good Earth* is a 1931 novel by Pearl S.
Buck depicting the life of a Chinese peasant farmer and his relationship to the land.
The book won the Pulitzer Prize and helped Buck win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
It shaped Western perceptions of rural China for generations: I read *The Good Earth* in high school.
- soilGround matter for planting
- literary classicCelebrated work of lasting merit
- family sagaMultigenerational narrative chronicle
- ChinaEast Asian superpower
- farmingCultivating land for food
Pearl Buck · Pearl S. Buck · harvest · land · peasant · drought · famine · toil · rice · fields · fertility · crops · struggle · family · plantation · roots · sweat · seasons
- 1930s NovelsGone with the Wind, Brave New World, The Maltese Falcon, Rebecca, The Hobbit
- Rural Fictionfrontier stories, Thomas Hardy, John Steinbeck, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Grapes of Wrath
- Modernist ClassicsThe Great Gatsby, Ulysses, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waste Land
setting and cultural focus
The Good EarthThe Great Gatsby
Twenties novel about obsession
American Psycho · Breakfast at Tiffany's · Ulysses · Main Street · The Jungle
good, better, goodness, goodly, earth, earthy, earthly, earthen, earthiness