Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed, 1942 Book of the Month Club Edition with World War II War Bonds ad on Dust Jacket
Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize winner, Pearl S. Buck, was one of the most popular and prolific writers of the 20th century. This is a Book of the Month Club edition of Dragon Seed: A Novel of China Today, published in 1942 during World War II.
Of note: the BOTMC devoted the entire back panel of the dust jacket to promote war bonds with this timeless message: "This book, like all books, is a symbol of the liberty and freedom for which we fight. You, as a reader of books, can do you share in the desperate battle to protect those liberties... BUY WAR BONDS. (Bonds or stamps may be purchased at most book stores, all banks, and many other places of business. To buy them is to become a true soldier of Democracy.)
ABOUT THE BOOK (Courtesy of Wikipedia) Unlike Buck's earlier novel The Good Earth, Dragon Seed is entirely fictional and based on her own second-hand thoughts rather than personal experience. The novel was included in Life Magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944. In 1944 Dragon Seed was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a film starring Katharine Hepburn, Turhan Bey, Walter Huston and Aline MacMahon.
ABOUT THE STORY (Courtesy of GoodReads)
One of the more political novels from the pen of Pearl Buck, Dragon Seed brings to light the tragedy of the Japanese invasion and occupation of mainland China during WWII. Centering her story around the fictional family of Ling Tan, Buck recreates the heart wrenching devastation that war inflicted on these gentle innocent people. Ling Tan and his family were simple farmers living in peaceful isolation. Western technology, and likewise the machinery of war, were unknown in these outlying regions of China. And even though literacy was on the rise among the younger generations, the alarming reports of foreign aggression went largely ignored. For the peasants, the transition from one political ruler to another was virtually inconsequential; life revolved around their farms and their villages. Patriotism was not the concept of loving and defending a country; their land was their country. But as the invasion moves inland and the roads are jammed with survivors fleeing west, Ling Tan and his neighbors are forced to face the harsh realities of war. "Days passed and with the rulers gone the people held themselves the more steadfast knowing that they and they alone were left to stand against the enemy and upon each man himself now depended what would happen. So it had happened again and again in other times, for rulers anywhere are always the first to fly, and the people must stay behind to be steadfast.
BIXLEY NOTES
• Dragon Seed: A Novel of China Today
• Written by Pearl S. Buck
• Published by John Day in association with Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941
• Book of the Month Club edition, 1942
• 378 pages
• Linen hardcover with dust jacket
VINTAGE NOTES
• In very good condition
• Binding is nice and tight
• No apparent shelf wear on the hardcover
• A few pages have some small stains in the bottom corner but do not interfere with the text
• Dust jacket is torn and creased along the edges as expected with age
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (1892-1973), also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu (Chinese: 赛珍珠), was an American writer and novelist. In October 1892, her family took the 4-month-old baby girl to China. As the daughter of missionaries to China, and later as a missionary herself, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in Zhenjiang. The family spent their summers in a villa in Kuling town, Mountain Lu, Jiujiang, and it was during this annual pilgrimage that the young girl decided to become a writer. The Good Earth was the best-selling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces." She was the first American woman to win the prize.
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