"East Wind: West Wind" by Pearl S. Buck

One of the best books I read (re-read?) this year was "Shōgun" by James Clavell and no matter what else I turned to, it seems this brilliant historical novel was always somewhere at the corner of my mind. I was so enthralled with it that it took me a month to get away from reading about samurai and Japanese history, it was literary eye-opening experience, although I'm perfectly aware it has nothing to do with Japan nowadays (unfortunately, otherwise I would be perfectly fine if samurai are still around). It wasn't long before I remembered the most prominent writer about pre-WW2 life in China, great Pearl Buck.

At certain point during 1960s, as reflection of post-WW2 prosperity and typical sign of middle-class conventionality, many homes in my country had bookshelves adorned with collected works of writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lev Tolstoy and (for some reason) Pearl Buck. I have my doubts about who actually ever read them but here they were, lined perfectly in their red hardback editions, ready to impress visitors who would secretly gape with admiration at this sign of host's good taste (another collection of collected works, by Karl May, was not so prominently displayed but was much more read). These collected works were in general left to collect dust for decades and can still be found in second-hand bookshops for pennies - one of them happened to be tucked away on the bottom shelf in my vacation spot. Remembering how much I enjoyed Clavell's "Shōgun" , I decided to re-visit Pearl Buck after some 30 years and since "East Wind: West Wind" happened to have been the only books of her that I ever read, it seemed like a good idea to check out on a old friend.

Now, Pearl Buck is a bit of mystery - the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (Edith Wharton won Pulitzer Prize and was nominated for Nobel several times but never got one) she seems to have fallen out of fashion, her loudest critics being Chinese themselves, who immensely dislike her description of China of bygone times. Even during her lifetime Chinese government was strongly opposed to her novels and although to me her writing appears strikingly beautiful and good-natured, some saw it as a insult. Be it as it may, her novels obviously portray life the way once was and is not anymore - Buck grew up in China, saw this herself and if she romanticised it, well she was artist after all. 

Her first novel, "East Wind: West Wind" is almost heartbreakingly poignant epistolary story told by young and inexperienced Kwei-lan who is sent as a bride into pre-arranged marriage to a man who she doesn't know and is taught to obey. Raised sheltered behind the walls and knowing absolutely nothing about outside life, she discovers that everything her parents told her about serving her husband is wrong, since he has been educated in the West and intensely dislike her silent servitude. Confused and fearful not to make a wrong step, Kwei-lan slowly learns how difficult but inevitable is to accept the changes and how futile is to avoid them - sticking to the principles just breaks hearts and divide families. Buck lovingly and knowingly sees tradition from the point of view of her heroine but we are also left to understand different perspectives - it is a short but beautifully written novel, just as good as I remember.