East and West by Pearl S Buck

Buck reimagined the lives of ordinary Chinese people in The Good Earth, a international best-seller that became a blockbuster film when it was published in 1932. Buck went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, making her the first American woman to do so. She foresee China's future as a superpower long before anybody else, and she understood the critical importance of China's relationship with the United States for both countries. She experienced the beginnings of the Chinese revolution as a teenager, and as a young lady, she narrowly avoided being slain in the violent conflict between Chinese Nationalists and the newly founded Communist Party.