Buck, Pearl S(ydenstricker)

(US, 1892–1973)

Pearl S. Buck was brought up in China where her parents were missionaries. Her books, many of which were best-sellers when first published, are based on her experience of China. Her most famous novel is The Good Earth (1931), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, about the farmer Wang Lung. Wang exemplifies the virtues of hard work, self-sacrifice, and moral responsibility. Although this makes the book sound like a Christian tract, by focusing on the mundane details of daily life Buck evokes the sense of a culture that is both alien and ageless. In Dragonseed (1942), also a compelling read, Buck explores territory previously untouched by women writers; the brutality of war, mass killings, homosexual and gang rape, and the dramatic transformation of a Chinese way of life. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938.

Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Willa Cather  LM