Culture
11.19.13

Why You Should Read Pearl Buck’s ‘New’ Novel

Sheila Melvin

When I first heard that The Eternal Wonder, a new novel by Pearl Buck, was scheduled for publication by Open Road Media on October 22 of this year, I assumed the announcement was either a mistake or a joke.

Buck, of course, is the...

Out of School
08.03.12

The Rehabilitation of Pearl Buck

Peter Conn

In the summer of 1934, Pearl Buck boarded a ship in Shanghai that was bound for America. She was forty-two years old, and had lived for thirty-four of those years in China, mostly in cities along the Yangzi River. Pearl and her first husband,...

Out of School
03.26.12

Re-Reading: The Good Earth

Maura Cunningham

The Good Earth simultaneously manages to be both a classic and not very good. This is not, I trust, a controversial statement: Pearl Buck’s 1931 novel suffered a mixed reputation from the start. While many early readers hailed her work...

The NYRB China Archive
10.14.10

The Question of Pearl Buck

Jonathan D. Spence
from New York Review of Books

The announcement by the Swedish Academy in November 1938 that Pearl Buck had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature was met with sarcasm and even derision by many writers and critics. They were not impressed that this was the third choice by...