The Good Earth The Good Earth The Good Earth is a novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 that dramatizes family life in a Chinese village in the early 20th century. It is the first book in a trilogy that includes "Sons" (1932) and "A House Divided" (1935). It was the best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932, and was influential in Buck's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Buck, who grew up in China as the daughter of missionaries, wrote the book while living in China and
Sai Jinhua crafted her headstone. The life of Sai Jinhua had been adapted into several films, plays, and television series. In works she is portrayed as a heroine of the Chinese nation who saves the country single-handedly during a crisis or as a "yaonie" (), a woman with abnormal powers or a female demon. Ying Hu, author of "Tales of Translation: Composing the New Woman in China, 1899-1918", wrote that Sai Jinhua "is often portrayed in extreme colors" in fiction. Ying Hu wrote that "portraits of Sai Jinhua in the first decade of the twentieth century tended to be ambivalent, if not