Summary
Winner of 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
An Oprah’s Book Club Selection
A USA Today bestseller
A Publishers Weekly bestseller
A Booklist Editors’ Choice, December 2007
This Pulitzer Prize–winning classic tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers, but they will soon meet their own downfall.
Hard times come upon Wang Lung and his family when flood and drought force them to seek work in the city. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.
Editorial Reviews
“The Good Earth has style, power, coherence, and a pervasive sense of dramatic reality.” —New York Times Book Review
“A comment upon the meaning and tragedy of life as it is lived in any age in any quarter of the globe.” —New York Times
“One of the most important and revealing novels of our time.” —Pittsburgh Post Gazette
“One need never have lived in China or know anything about the Chinese to understand it or respond to its appeal.” —Boston Transcript
“A beautiful, beautiful book. At last we read, in the pages of a novel, of the real people of China.” —Saturday Review
“To read this story of Wang Lung is to be slowly and deeply purified; and when the last page is finished it is as if some significant part of one’s own days were over.” —Bookman