The Good Earth (The Franklin Library)

319 pp. Red leatherette, gilt decor on boards and spine, all edges gilt, decorative endpapers. Illustrated by Barron Storey. Although more than eighty years have passed since Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. This indelible portrait of China in the 1920s, when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings, tells the moving story of honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-Lan. It is must reading to fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during the last century.