Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Good Earth | 1931 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 2 | Земля | 1931 | Pearl S. Buck | N/A |
| 3 | Sons | 1932 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 4 | A House Divided | 1935 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 5 | Casa Dividida | 1935 | Pearl S. Buck | N/A |
The Good Earth (1931) opens the trilogy with Wang Lung, a Chinese farmer who works the land, acquires wealth, and watches his family change under its influence. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize and established Pearl S. Buck as a major literary voice in America. It is still read in schools and universities and holds up as a careful, unsentimental portrait of rural China in the early twentieth century.
Sons (1932) moves to Wang Lung’s children, tracking the fractures that form in the family as China itself changes around them. A House Divided (1935) follows the grandchildren into the upheaval of modern China, completing the generational arc. The three books together form one of the more substantial family sagas in twentieth-century American literature.