House of Earth: The Good Earth; Sons; A House Divided ...

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A portrayal of China in the midst of revolution. This trilogy starts with The Good Earth, a story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan and their struggles to survive the harsh realities of life in China during the reign of the last emperor. The vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings for the ordinary people. Sons, the second in the trilogy, is a starkly real tale of sons rising against their honored fathers and tells of the bitter struggle to the death between the old and the new in China. Revolutions sweep the nation, leaving destruction and death in their wake, yet also promising emancipation to China's oppressed millions who are groping for a way to survive in a modern age. A House Divided, the third volume of the trilogy, sees Wang Yuan caught between the opposing ideas of different generations. After six years abroad, Yuan returns to China in the middle of a peasant uprising. His cousin is a captain in the revolutionary army, his sister has scandalized the family by her premarital pregnancy, and his warlord father continues to cling to his traditional ideals. It is through Yuan's efforts that a kind of peace is restored to the family.

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