Peony, Pearl S. Buck
Peony, Pearl S. Buck
List: $35.99 | Sale: $25.20
Club: $17.99

Peony
A Novel of China

Author: Pearl S. Buck

Narrator: Kirsten Potter

Unabridged: 12 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Oasis Audio

Published: 02/22/2011

Synopsis

Young Peony is sold into a rich Chinese household as a bondmaid - an awkward role in which she is more a servant, but less a daughter. As she grows into a lovely, provocative young woman, Peony falls in love with the family's only son. However, tradition forbids them to wed. How she resolves her love for him and her devotion to her adoptive family unfolds in this profound tale, based on true events in China over a century ago.

About The Author

Pearl S. Buck recreated the lives of ordinary Chinese people in The Good Earth, an overnight worldwide best-seller in 1932, later a blockbuster movie. Buck went on to become the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Long before anyone else, she foresaw China’s future as a superpower, and she recognized the crucial importance for both countries of China’s building a relationship with the United States. As a teenager she had witnessed the first stirrings of Chinese revolution, and as a young woman she narrowly escaped being killed in the deadly struggle between Chinese Nationalists and the newly formed Communist Party.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Alice on January 14, 2018

I must say this historical novel is quite different from anything I’ve read thus far in the genre. It is a story of impossible love between a Chinese bondmaid and a young Jewish man in the Jewish community of 19th century China. The crux of the story lies in the spiritual or ideological clash betwee......more

Goodreads review by Kressel on December 18, 2012

As I've said before, my criterion for rating a psychology book a 5 is if it changes my life positively. This novel solidified for me my criterion for giving a novel a 5: do I shed actual tears for the characters? In this case, the answer is yes, so hence the 5 stars. The book is set in the home of a......more

Goodreads review by Adam on January 26, 2013

Years ago, I discovered that there was a Kosher Chinese restaurant in Hendon, a suburb in North West London. It was, and still is, called ‘Kaifeng’. It is named after the city of the same name in mainland China, which had a Jewish community dating back to 1100 AD if not before. So, when I discovered......more

Goodreads review by Ana on May 01, 2025

3,5⭐......more

Quotes

"Peony has the vividness of scene and episode and character and the colorful detail that Pearl Buck's readers have come to expect of her novels in China."
-New York Herald Tribune

"There is great simplicity in the telling of this tale. Perhaps it is expected, but it is nonetheless splendid."
-Saturday Review of Literature

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