Pavilion of Women by Pearl S Buck

Pavilion of Women by Pearl S Buck

On her fortieth birthday, Madame Wu carries out a decision she has been planning for a long time: she tells her husband that after twenty-four years their physical life together is now over and she wishes him to take a second wife. The House of Wu, one of the oldest and most revered in China, is thrown into an uproar by her decision, but Madame Wu will not be dissuaded and arranges for a young country girl to come take her place in bed. Elegant and detached, Madame Wu orchestrates this change as she manages everything in the extended household of more than sixty relatives and servants. Alone in her own quarters, she relishes her freedom and reads books she has never been allowed to touch. When her son begins English lessons, she listens, and is soon learning from the foreigner, a free-thinking priest named Brother Andre, who will change her life. Pavilion of Women is a thought-provoking combination of Old China, unorthodox Christianity, and liberation, written by Pearl S. Buck, a Nobel Prize winner born and raised in China. Few stories raise so many questions about the nature and roles of men and women, about self-discipline and happiness. At the center is the amazing Madame Wu -brilliant, beautiful, full of contradictions and authority.

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.