The Good Earth, a novel by Pearl Buck, was published in 1931. The novel, about peasant life in China in the 1920s, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1932. - Pearl S. Buck is an American novelist and writer. - She was awarded the Nobel prize in 1938 for her rich and truly epic description of peasant life in China. - Pearl S. Buck was the first American woman to win the Nobel prize for literature.