This is the first book of the House of Earth trilogy, the story of a Chinese farmer, Wang Lung, at the beginning of the 20th century. We follow this penniless fellow, from just before his wedding with O-Lan, the slave of a big lord, to just before his death. A family that goes from the poorest to being wealthy, the birth of Wang Lung’s children and grandchildren, the decline of his interest in his wife, and the new pretty young woman he buys. And all through this, Wang Lung is never at peace, there is always something he has to deal with. This is a historical fiction and for that interesting to see this society where wives and daughters are only seen as slaves and where the honour of a family is the principal preoccupation. However, quite a long and dense book to get through.
“But there was no such content now in his love for this girl, and there was no health in her for him. At night when she would have no more of him, pushing him out of the door petulantly, with her small hands suddenly strong on his shoulders, his silver thrust into her bosom, he went away hungry as he came. It was as though a man, dying of thirst, drank the salt water of the sea which, though it is water, yet dries his blood into thirst and yet greater thirst so that in the end he dies, maddened by his very drinking. He went in to her and he had his will of her again and again and he came away unsatisfied.”