The Living Reed follows four generations of one family, the Kims, beginning with Il-han and his father, both advisors to the royal family in Korea. When Japan invades and the queen is killed, Il-han takes his family into hiding. In the ensuing years, he and his family take part in the secret war against the Japanese occupation. Pearl S. Buck's epic tells the history of Korea through the lives of one family. She paints an amazing portrait of the country, and makes us empathize with their struggle for sovereignty through her beautifully drawn characters.
Pearl S. Buck was born in West Virginia and taken to China as an infant before the turn of the century. Buck grew up speaking Chinese as well as English. She is the most widely translated American author to this day. She has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. She died in 1973.
Product Details
Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Moyer Bell and its subsidiaries (January 1, 2004)
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.
This review is from: Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (Paperback)
There are many different ways to review the writings of any kind.Here we have an old novel written by a woman who grew up in China and understood the cultural differences. It is by no means the most accurate description of Korean history or the way people lived of her time. However, I ended up admiring her attempt to know better and in the end to have understood the people and the way of their living and struggle. Nobody can understand the cultural differences and the values of the society unless we live on both sides of the world. That was what she did and used it for her writing. It was a good writing as a novel and described exactly the way of living of the Korean people during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Unbelievable? That is because you have no idea of the real core of different cultures.For example, my family maintains 1,000 years of written history of family geneology of my clan.It shows how we died during the struggle and how we maintain our family by a written code of conduct based on Humanism. That is the reason why Korean are nationalistic.That was accurately described in her writing.
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This review is from: Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (Paperback)
The book The living Reed is a good book worth reading if one want to know more about Korean history in fictional form. The Korean history is interesting since the country always has been the cultural center of the Far East, between countries like Japan, China and Russia; Chinese culture have always been transformed in Korea on its way to Japan. Several countries did recognize Korea important from both a geographical, political and cultural perspective. So important that these countries supported a war in Korea during the years of 1950-53. The two divided Korea is a living proof of this.
Pearl Buck is not a historical writer of accuracy but describes the Korean history and the Korean people in an interesting, fictional way that gives more understanding for the current situation on the Korean peninsula, a situation that have been neglected by the world too long. To say the less, Korea is still not well.known to the majority of Westerners, as much as Japan and China.
No, Koreans are not heroes more than anyone else but I truly believe that the people that contributed to the modern Korea of today should be remembered and acknowledged and Pearl Buck do it very well in this book.
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5.0 out of 5 starsThis novel will leave you yearning for more!, February 1, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Living Reed: A Novel of Korea (Paperback)
"The Living Reed" is an epic novel that will take you on an emotional journey. Buck's language paints a colorful picture in your mind that you will not soon forget. Her characters are lovable and honorable. Buck brings a segment of history to the public that, sadly, is often forgotten or overlooked. I highly recommend this book if you are a lover of historical fiction.
She makes it possible to understand the Korean culture and to get 'inside' a Korean's mind. As a Korean living in the U.S., I have gained a sense of Korean nationalism, honor and respect that I never knew I had within me.
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