The Good Earth is a historical fiction novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 that dramatizes family life in a 20th-century Chinese village in Anhwei. It is the first book in her House of Earth trilogy, continued in Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935). 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. Buck, who grew up in China as the daughter of American missionaries, wrote the book while living in China and drew on her first-hand observation of Chinese village life. The realistic and sympathetic depiction of the farmer Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan helped prepare Americans of the 1930s to consider Chinese as allies in the coming war with Japan.[1]
The novel was included in Life magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944.[2] In 2004, the book returned to the bestseller list when chosen by the television host Oprah Winfrey for Oprah's Book Club.[3]
A Broadway stage adaptation was produced by the Theatre Guild in 1932, written by the father and son playwriting team of Owen and Donald Davis, but critics gave a poor reception, and it ran only 56 performances. However, the 1937 film, The Good Earth, which was based on the stage version, was more successful.
