How long is it?
368 pages in the Washington Square Press 2004 paperback edition.
Fiction · Novel · Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction
The Good Earth
CanonicalPulitzer Prize for Novel (pre-1948), 1932Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 39 / 100Moderate
- Length
- 368 pagesWashington Square Press · 2004
- Reading time
- 7 h 15 minat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 4 / 5
About 7 h 15 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 15 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
Wang Lung, a poor farmer in early-twentieth-century China, marries O-lan, an enslaved woman from the wealthy House of Hwang. She works beside him in the fields and runs their growing household, helping them save enough to buy land from her former masters. But drought and famine threaten everything they have built, and Wang Lung holds to the farm as the family's best hope of security.
Reader notes
The family saga unfolds over decades at a steady pace, attending closely to farm work, childbirth and domestic obligations as fortunes change. Much of the story lies in the daily effort of keeping a household alive, including the labor of a woman who has lived in slavery.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Descriptive · Direct
- Tone
- Bleak · Earnest · Melancholic · Reflective
- Structure
- Linear
- Driven by
- Character · Plot · Relationships
- Point of view
- Third person, limited
- Setting
- Anhwei, China
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 3 / 5
- Ideas
- 3 / 5
- Structure
- 2 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 1 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Belonging
- Class
- Family
- Nature and environment
- Survival
- Wealth
Content notes
- Violence
- Mild
- Sexual content
- Mild
- Swearing
- None
- Substance use
- Mild
- Abuse
- Strong
- Self-harm or suicide
- Mild
Standing and awards
Canonical
- Pulitzer Prize for Novel (pre-1948), 1932
- Widely translated and studied
- Author: Nobel Prize in Literature, 1938
- Pulitzer Prize — Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, 1932
Series and reading order
House of Earth
- 1The Good Earth · This book · 1931
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
Washington Square Press · 2004 · Paperback. ISBN 9780743272933.
What is the order of books in House of Earth?
1. The Good Earth.
How long does it take to read The Good Earth?
About 7 hours 15 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 368-page Washington Square Press edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck was an American writer and humanitarian whose long residence in China gave her fiction an unusual grounding in Chinese domestic and rural life. Her best-known novels use direct, descriptive prose to place large historical pressures within families: The Good Earth follows labor, hunger, property, and social ascent through a farming household, while Sons traces how inheritance and political ambition reshape the next generation. This attention to ordinary experience helped challenge simplified American ideas about China and its people. Buck’s range extended beyond historically framed novels. The Big Wave treats loss, safety, and attachment in the spare form of a fable, and The Child Who Never Grew draws on her experience of raising a daughter with intellectual disabilities to examine care, education, and parental responsibility. Across these works, Buck’s characteristic method is to approach social conditions through intimate relationships and practical choices. Her writing is most distinctive when it joins a broad cross-cultural perspective to clear, accessible storytelling.
If you liked this
Edition and details
- Publisher
- Washington Square Press
- Publication year
- 2004
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 368
- ISBN
- 9780743272933
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 1931
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Novel · Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction · Historical fiction · Family saga · Social novel
- Editions
- 15
- Languages
- 4 (English, Spanish, French, Chinese)
The catalog does not yet include a matching edition. Details may differ between editions.