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Pearl S Buck
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The Good Earth
by Pearl S Buck Review by Hasmita Chander This book was recommended to me by my mother years ago but I somehow never got down to buying and reading it until now. I didn't know much about the book except that it's a classic, and recently when I told my mother I bought it, she said it is about a Chinese farmer. I didn't know that this book was published before my mother was born, in 1931. Or that Buck received the Pulitzer Prize for the book, and the 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature--she was the first American woman to receive it. The novel is written in simple language and is fast to read unlike the usual classics we tend to associate with heavy vocabulary and slow pace. It is the story of Wang Lung, a farmer in China--starting from the day of his marriage and ending with his death. The characters are beautifully rendered and are full of positive as well as negative traits, and so are realistic. The story is intriguing and moves you because you recognise the way human beings are, their needs, their secret desires, their helplessness and strength. Even though it is a story about China and the Chinese, I could immediately relate the situations to India, and I think it would hold good for people in most countries. It's an unforgettable book, a great work and one that I will treasure and recommend to people who care about life and reflection and human behaviour and personality.
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