Friday 26 November 2010

The Good Earth -- Pearl Buck

An epic tale of peasant life in pre-Cultural Revolution China tracing one family's rise from subsistence farming to great wealth. It's all there: concubines, opium, bandits, floods, riches, love and war. Moving and solemn, it is a novel of great beauty told with simplicity and resonance. One feels for Wang through his struggles but in the end, he brings a lot of misfortune upon himself, never seeming to be able to master himself ... But who would have chosen to be a woman in those times?!