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Dragon Seed: A Novel of China at War (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) Kindle Edition

by Pearl S. Buck (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 837 ratings
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A New York Times–bestselling historical novel about the Japanese invasion of Nanking from the author of The Good Earth.
Farmer Liang Tan knows only a quiet, traditional life in his remote Chinese farming community. When news filters in that Japanese forces are invading the country, he and his fellow villagers believe that if they behave decently to the Japanese soldiers, the civilians might remain undisturbed. They’re in for a shock, as the attackers lay waste to the country and install a puppet government designed to systematically carry out Japanese interests. In response, the Chinese farmers and their families form a resistance—which not only carries grave risk, but also breaks their vow of nonviolence, leading them to wonder if they’re any different than their enemy. Later adapted into a film featuring Katharine Hepburn, Dragon Seed is a brilliant and unflinching look at the horrors of war. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author’s estate.
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  1. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  2. Publisher
    Open Road Media
  3. Publication date
    August 21, 2012
  4. Language
    English
  5. File size
    15591 KB
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From the Publisher

From the Illustrated Biography

pearl s. buck, pearl s. buck painting

pearl s. buck, pearl s. buck in korea, pearl s. buck speech

pearl s. buck, pearl s. buck and family

Portrait of Pearl S. Buck

Johann Waldemar de Rehling Quistgaard painted Buck in 1933, when the writer was forty-one years old-a year after she won the Pulitzer Prize for The Good Earth. The portrait currently hangs at Green Hills Farm in Pennsylvania, where Buck lived from 1934 and which is today the headquarters for Pearl S. Buck International. (Image courtesy of Pearl S. Buck International.)

Buck Addresses Poverty in Asia

Buck addresses an audience in Korea in 1964, discussing the issues of poverty and discrimination faced by children in Asia. She established the Orphanage and Opportunity Center in Buchon City, Korea, in 1965.

Buck and Family

Buck with her husband, Richard J. Walsh, and their daughter, Elizabeth.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Vivid and painful . . . the first sharp, fictional account of resistance in Occupied China.” —Time

About the Author

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) was a bestselling and Nobel Prize–winning author. Her classic novel The Good Earth (1931) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and William Dean Howells Medal. Born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, Buck was the daughter of missionaries and spent much of the first half of her life in China, where many of her books are set. In 1934, civil unrest in China forced Buck back to the United States. Throughout her life she worked in support of civil and women’s rights, and established Welcome House, the first international, interracial adoption agency. In addition to her highly acclaimed novels, Buck wrote two memoirs and biographies of both of her parents. For her body of work, Buck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, the first American woman to have done so. She died in Vermont. 

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B008F4NQXG
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (August 21, 2012)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 21, 2012
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 15591 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 200 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1980209359
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 837 ratings

About the author

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Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck

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Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker was born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Her parents were Southern Presbyterian missionaries, most often stationed in China, and from childhood, Pearl spoke both English and Chinese. She returned to China shortly after graduation from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1914, and the following year, she met a young agricultural economist named John Lossing Buck. They married in 1917, and immediately moved to Nanhsuchou in rural Anhwei province. In this impoverished community, Pearl Buck gathered the material that she would later use in The Good Earth and other stories of China.

Pearl began to publish stories and essays in the 1920s, in magazines such as The Nation, The Chinese Recorder, Asia, and The Atlantic Monthly. Her first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published by the John Day Company in 1930. John Day's publisher, Richard Walsh, would eventually become Pearl's second husband, in 1935, after both received divorces.

In 1931, John Day published Pearl's second novel, The Good Earth. This became the bestselling book of both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize and the Howells Medal in 1935, and would be adapted as a major MGM film in 1937. Other novels and books of nonfiction quickly followed. In 1938, less than a decade after her first book had appeared, Pearl won the Nobel Prize in literature, the first American woman to do so. By the time of her death in 1973, Pearl had published more than seventy books: novels, collections of stories, biography and autobiography, poetry, drama, children's literature, and translations from the Chinese. She is buried at Green Hills Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
837 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Duke
5.0 out of 5 stars This book was an easy read and quite a good read
Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2016
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This book was an easy read and quite a good read. The characters are not extremely developed and I actually thought that suited a novel set in that time and place. There are a lot of characters to get to know, all in a large family and they are a versatile bunch. They faced some awful trials in their lives and while I rather liked the various choices that each made, I do not think the story would be well-served by lots of characters continually changing. Some of the characters do change, but not necessarily the ones you would expect. That was an interesting surprise to me. My only problem with the book was the similarity of names. But Pearl Buck thoroughly knew China and the book benefits from that. It is very authentic and she was a wonderful writer.
4 people found this helpful
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Karl Janssen
4.0 out of 5 stars Life under occupation
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2014
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Of all the American writers who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pearl S. Buck probably gets the least amount of credit. You rarely see her name pop up on any “100 best” lists these days. There is a romanticism and an optimism in her books that was already falling out of fashion with critics back in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Those with modernist leanings or cynical outlooks are unlikely to appreciate the unpretentious beauty of her works, but those who aren’t averse to good old-fashioned storytelling with just a hint of hopeful preachiness will find her novels quite moving. I can honestly say I’ve never read a bad book with her name on it. Nevertheless, Dragon Seed, originally published in 1942, is not her best work, and though I did enjoy it I must confess at times it left me scratching my head.

Buck is best-known for her 1931 novel The Good Earth. To those who have read that great work, the opening chapters of Dragon Seed feel like familiar territory. The protagonist of both novels is a farmer who loves his land, works hard to till the soil, and does his best to secure a promising future for his children. The similarities end there, however. Ling Tan and his family live in a rural village outside of Nanjing, a.k.a. Nanking. When the region is invaded by the Japanese, they must adjust to the horrors of life under the subjugation of a hostile enemy. As is typical of Buck’s work, she never uses the words “China” or “Japan,” and deliberately avoids historical specifics in an attempt to tell a story that is more universally human. While that’s a commendable intention, and she almost pulls it off, the lack of detail is slightly annoying. Dragon Seed is a fictional account of the 1937 event known as the Rape of Nanking. The atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers are an integral part of Buck’s narrative, in particular the indiscriminate rape and murder of Chinese women. The story, told from the perspective of the victims, is understandably one-sided, as are many literary works about World War II. The invaders are all soulless monsters, —which may be justified given the historical facts—yet to Buck’s credit, the Chinese are not all saints and martyrs either. Some become collaborators; others form a resistance movement that drives them to commit brutal acts of their own. Ling Tan and his family are altered irrevocably by the tragedy and brutality of war. Buck tells the story with a gritty realism that is unsparingly frank and heartbreakingly powerful.

At about the three-quarter mark, however, a new character is introduced that is just too perfect to be true. The novel changes horses mid-stream and trods down a much more romanticized path, becoming something that calls to mind the golden age of the television miniseries. The purpose of this change of tone is for Buck to inject some hope into the proceedings, but the book’s final act is so incongruous with all that came before that the effect is truly jarring. This is not a bad book by any means, especially if you’re open to a good romantic epic, but in many ways Dragon Seed feels like two separate stories, one dark and one rosy, with a light switch turned on in between.

As always, Buck’s prose is a joy to read. She constructs sentences with a unique syntax that calls to mind the unusual word ordering of Mandarin Chinese. The result is both poetically beautiful and refreshingly forthright. She is a brilliant observer of human nature and capable of creating scenes of great emotional resonance. Though Dragon Seed may not quite measure up to The Good Earth trilogy, it never lets you forget that Buck is a fantastic writer.
10 people found this helpful
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Layton Knight
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book: Excellent Vendor
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2023
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I like to have some hardbooks on my shelf for aesthetic, and when I see a book I am really interested in I spend the money to own a physical copy of history. This Vendor did an excellent job packaging this book, which saved it's life because my house got hit with a huge rain storm the day it was delivered. It was sitting in a small puddle in my mailbox, but when I opened packaging, the book was unscathed. Has some minor wear and tear on hardback, but this thing is decades old. Great condition on all the paper, excellent book as well.
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Great story
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2022
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I love the individuals in the family. I disliked the ending...left me wanting more. I would like to have followed this family and to know what happened to each of the sons and daughters.
2 people found this helpful
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M. Newman
5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Novel
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2018
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This is a brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning novel centered on a Chinese family of peasant farmers during the Japanese occupation of China in the late 1930s.
Lin Tang and his family originally believe that things will be fine as long as they remain apolitical and tend to their crops. Things change, however, once they are confronted by the cruelty of the occupiers.
With her simple but beautiful prose and extensive knowledge of Chinese history and culture ( she was the daughter of Christian missionaries in China) Pearl Buck expertly portrays the family life and traditions of the Chinese peasant as well as the history of the Chinese resistance during the war.
I had read and loved The Good Earth many years ago but somehow never read any of her other works. I'm glad I finally got around to reading Dragon Seed which I actually feel is a better, more exciting book.
20 people found this helpful
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Linda Pfeiffer
5.0 out of 5 stars Another of Pearl Buck's China series, at war with Japan during WWII
Reviewed in Canada on February 18, 2023
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I rediscovered Pearl S. Buck on Kindle in 2017. This is now the lucky 13th book, I have read of hers. As usual, her easy style of writing, and the accuracy of the people, place and time she writes about, all combine to give the reader the most enjoyable story. This one concerns the family of Ling Tan, a peasant farmer and his wife, three sons and two daughters. Two of the sons are married, and one of his daughters was married off to a merchant's son in the city near the small village where the others all live together. The food they plant, grow and harvest, feeds the entire family with enough left over to sell in the city to pay for any extras the family needs. They have a satisfying, pleasant life until they learn that their country will soon be at war with an invading force, which we know is Japanese. As the invaders close in on their small village, their entire lives change. The older sons must leave to join others on the hillside, away from their farm, and work for the resistance attempting to kill the enemy in any way they are able, returning home only sporadically to check on their wives, children and parents. Horrible atrocities are committed by the enemy, which sends their youngest son to also join the resistance where he loses the rest of his childhood quickly and becomes a vicious leader of his people. Meanwhile, his father must work the land mostly by himself and turn the food over to the enemy, leaving the family with little to eat and noway to earn any money.
The way this family and others try to survive the war is the main focus of the book. I was enthralled with the people of China once again. When you read a Pearl S. Buck novel, you are transported to another place and time, but her writing is timeless and as easy to read today as when it was written. In 2023 with another war raging in Europe, my sympathies are drawn to the people who stay and carry on, just trying to outlive the enemy. This is a marvelous book that I highly recommend.
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hitendra mishra
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in India on June 8, 2017
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Very nicely written. The story grips you.
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Aus Liz
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in Australia on June 20, 2017
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Well written insight into the impact of invasion on the rural peoples of the time. Definitely worth reading
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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars dragon seed
Reviewed in Italy on July 15, 2016
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Una grande scrittrice, che descrive le sofferenze di un popolo semplice e ignaro di ciò che lo sta colpendo in modo irreversibile nelle sicurezze quotidiane di una vita imperniata sul lavoro e la famiglia.
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Rose Twine
5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping tale of the birth of China
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 26, 2010
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I read 'the Good Earth' as a kid and enjoyed it. I ordered more of her work when the new biography came out and I heard more about her life. This is a well crafted novel, which gets at the heart of modern history and how China came to be formed. It could almost be a daydream about the origins of Mao and his last wife. Buck poses tough ethical questions and challenges the reader to consider what they'd do in the place of these peasants caught up in a conflict. Clearly she's writing about the Japanese invasion, but doesn't specify anything explicitly. She includes issues about inter generational conflicts, feminism, town versus country, violence, sexual exploitation. I'd say this is a better book than 'the Good Earth'.
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