Which American author of The Good Earth won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Which American author of The Good Earth won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature? Pearl S. Buck did. The Swedish Academy cited her epic descriptions of peasant life in China and her biographical writing.

Buck was born in 1892 to American missionary parents and spent much of her childhood in China. Her 1931 novel The Good Earth follows Wang Lung and O-Lan through family life, farming, poverty, prosperity, and social change. It became a major American bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932.

Buck received the Nobel in 1938, becoming the first American woman to win the Literature prize and the fourth woman overall. The award was controversial even at the time, with critics arguing that other American writers were more deserving. The Good Earth is also the first volume of a trilogy completed by Sons and A House Divided.