基本信息
書名：The Good Earth 大地
難度：Lexile藍思閱讀指數1530L
作者：Pearl S. Buck 賽珍珠
齣版社名稱：Washington Square Press
齣版時間：2012
語種： 英文
ISBN：9781476733043
商品尺寸：2.5 x 10.5 x 17 cm
包裝：平裝
頁數：418

編輯推薦
The Good Earth《大地》是美國作傢賽珍珠（Pearl S. Buck）的代錶作。1932年，賽珍珠憑藉這部小說獲得普利策小說奬，並在1938年榮獲諾貝爾文學奬。1937年被改編成電影並榮獲奧斯卡奬。
在《大地》裏，作者以同情的筆觸和白描的手法，塑造瞭一係列勤勞樸實的中國農民的形象，生動地描繪瞭他們的傢庭生活，以飽蘸同情心的筆寫齣瞭“農民靈魂的幾個側麵”。在小說齣版的20世紀上半葉，這一作品，跨越瞭東西文化間的鴻溝，有力改變瞭不少西方讀者眼中中國那種“曆史悠久而又軟弱落後的神秘國度”印象。
推薦理由：
1. 普利策小說奬、諾貝爾文學奬獲奬著作，被瑞典皇傢學院譽為“對中國農村生活”具有“史詩般描述”的作品；
2. 賽珍珠代錶作品，歐普拉讀書俱樂部推薦書目；
3. 英文原版，原汁原味，內容無刪節，小巧便攜。
PEARL S. BUCK’S EPIC PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING NOVEL OF A VANISHED CHINA AND ONE FAMILY’S SHIFTING FORTUNES
Though more than seventy years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. In The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck paints an 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. This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-Lan is must reading for those who would fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during the last century.
Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck traces the whole cycle of life: its terrors, its passions, its ambitions and rewards. Her brilliant novel—beloved by millions of readers—is a universal tale of an ordinary family caught in the tide of history.
Review
“A comment upon the meaning and tragedy of life as it is lived in any age in any quarter of the globe.” — The New York Times
“One of the most important and revealing novels of our time.” — Pittsburgh Post Gazette
“One need never have lived in China or know anything about the Chinese to understand it or respond to its appeal.” — Boston Transcript

內容簡介
The Good Earth《大地》敘述的是舊中國的農民王龍從一無所有而成為一個富戶的故事。貧農王龍娶瞭一個大傢庭的女傭娥蘭做妻子。娥蘭沉默寡言，吃苦耐勞，甚至在剛剛生完孩子後掙紮著爬起來和丈夫一起頂著烈日在田裏勞作。但王龍嫌她不夠美貌，對她十分冷淡。大飢荒來瞭，他們被迫舉傢前往南方謀生。王龍在一場動亂中渾水摸魚發瞭財，靠著娥蘭的幫助，迴到傢鄉並買瞭許多田地，富裕起來。他愈發嫌棄發妻平庸的外貌，另娶瞭一個女子。慢慢地，他老瞭，褪去瞭年輕時的浮躁和野心，惟一的心願就是守住傢業。他告誡兒子們韆萬不能賣地，土纔是人類寶貴的財富，是孕育一切生命的基礎。
The Good Earth is Buck’s classic story of Wang Lung, a Chinese peasant farmer, and his wife, O-lan, a former slave. With luck and hard work, the couple’s fortunes improve over the years: They are blessed with sons, and save steadily until one day they can afford to buy property in the House of Wang—the very house in which O-lan used to work. But success brings with it a new set of problems. Wang soon finds himself the target of jealousy, and as good harvests come and go, so does the social order. Will Wang’s family cherish the estate after he’s gone? And can his material success, the bedrock of his life, guarantee anything about his soul?

作者簡介
賽珍珠（Pearl Sydenstricker Buck，1892－1973），美國女作傢。本名珀爾·賽登斯特裏剋·布剋。賽珍珠是她自己起的中文名字。齣生於美國弗吉尼亞州，3個月時即被身為傳教士的雙親帶到中國。在雙語環境中長大，是以中文為母語之一的知名美國作傢。曾迴美四年接受高等教育。自1919年至1935年，她與丈夫蔔凱（J. L. Buck）長期居住在所執教的金陵大學分配給他們的樓房裏。在這裏她寫齣瞭於1938年榮獲諾貝爾文學奬的長篇小說《大地》三部麯等小說，並將《水滸傳》翻譯成英文在西方齣版。一生著譯作品80餘部。她病逝後，按其遺願，墓碑上隻鎸刻“賽珍珠”三個漢字。
Pearl S. Buck was born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia.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. 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.

目錄
Introduction
Chronology of Pearl Buck’s Life and Work
Historical Context of The Good Earth
The Good Earth
Notes
Interpretive Notes
Critical Excerpts
Questions for Discussion
Suggestions for the Interested Reader

精彩書摘
IT WAS WANG LUNG’S marriage day. At first, opening his eyes in the blackness of the curtains about his bed, he could not think why the dawn seemed different from any other. The house was still except for the faint, gasping cough of his old father, whose room was opposite to his own across the middle room. Every morning the old man’s cough was the first sound to be heard. Wang Lung usually lay listening to it and moved only when he heard it approaching nearer and when he heard the door of his father’s room squeak upon its wooden hinges.
But this morning he did not wait. He sprang up and pushed aside the curtains of his bed. It was a dark, ruddy dawn, and through a small square hole of a window, where the tattered paper fluttered, a glimpse of bronze sky gleamed. He went to the hole and tore the paper away.
“It is spring and I do not need this,” he muttered.
He was ashamed to say aloud that he wished the house to look neat on this day. The hole was barely large enough to admit his hand and he thrust it out to feel of the air. A small soft wind blew gently from the east, a wind mild and murmurous and full of rain. It was a good omen. The fields needed rain for fruition. There would be no rain this day, but within a few days, if this wind continued, there would be water. It was good. Yesterday he had said to his father that if this brazen, glittering sunshine continued, the wheat could not fill in the ear. Now it was as if Heaven had chosen this day to wish him well. Earth would bear fruit.
He hurried out into the middle room, drawing on his blue outer trousers as he went, and knotting about the fullness at his waist his girdle of blue cotton cloth. He left his upper body bare until he had heated water to bathe himself. He went into the shed which was the kitchen, leaning against the house, and out of its dusk an ox twisted its head from behind the corner next the door and lowed at him deeply. The kitchen was made of earthen bricks as the house was, great squares of earth dug from their own fields, and thatched with straw from their own wheat. Out of their own earth had his grandfather in his youth fashioned also the oven, baked and black with many years of meal preparing. On top of this earthen structure stood a deep, round, iron cauldron.