Born June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. American writer.

A missionary’s daughter, Pearl Buck spent her childhood and youth in China. In 1929 she published the novel East Wind: West Wind. In 1931 she published The Good Earth, a novel about a Chinese village (Russian translation, 1936). After moving to the USA, she continued to write about China, publishing Sons (1932; Russian translation, 1935) and A House Divided (1934; Russian translation, 1936).

During World War II, Pearl Buck wrote antifascist essays and pamphlets, including one on American-Soviet friendship (A Conversation About Russia, 1945). She published social and family novels about American life in the 1950’s under the pseudonym J. Sedges. Her novel, Command the Morning (1959), presents American scientists who are forced to create, an atomic bomb and who react to this in different ways. Proceeding from the point of view of abstract Christian democratism, Buck demands equality for Negroes and the abolition of colonialism. She was awarded the Nobel Prize (1938).