A House Divided

A House Divided is the powerful conclusion to Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning House of Earth trilogy, following The Good Earth and Sons. Set against the turbulent backdrop of revolutionary China in the 1920s and 1930s, this sweeping novel traces the fate of the Wang family across three generations as traditional Chinese society collides with the forces of modernity.
Wang Yuan, grandson of the peasant farmer Wang Lung who first tilled the good earth, embodies the divided soul of modern China. Educated in America, he returns to find his homeland torn between ancient customs and revolutionary fervor, between warlords and Nationalists, between the pull of the past and the promise of an uncertain future. Unlike his warrior father Wang the Tiger, Yuan seeks meaning not in conquest but in art, love, and the search for his true identity.
Through Yuan's eyes, Buck illuminates the profound dislocation of a generation caught between worlds. He moves through a China of crumbling dynasties and rising ideologies, of arranged marriages and romantic love, of peasant villages and cosmopolitan Shanghai. His struggles mirror those of a nation asking itself what it means to be Chinese in an age of upheaval.
Pearl S. Buck, daughter of American missionaries and raised in China, wrote with unparalleled authority about a culture she knew intimately. Her Nobel Prize citation praised her "rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China." In A House Divided, she extends that vision to encompass the educated classes grappling with China's transformation, creating a portrait of a civilization at a crossroads that resonates to this day.
This edition from LibriHouse.com presents the complete four-part novel—essential reading for anyone who has loved The Good Earth and wishes to discover how the Wang family saga reaches its moving conclusion.