RAS Shanghai – HILARY SPURLING ON BURYING THE BONES: PEARL BUCK IN CHINA – 29/5/12

Posted: May 28th, 2012 | No Comments »

RAS LECTURE

Tuesday 29th May 2012 at 7.00pm

The Tavern, Radisson Blu Plaza Xingguo Hotel 78 Xingguo Road,Shanghai

HILARY SPURLING

ON

BURYING THE BONES: PEARL BUCK IN CHINA

Pearl Buck is best known for her novel The Good Earth published in 1931 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces.”

In 1925, in a prophetic analysis written immediately after Sun Yat-sen’s death, Pearl Buck foresaw China’s future as a 21st century superpower, diagnosed an astonishing degree of ignorance about her in the West, and advised America that it would be a serious mistake to continue to underrate China. Her propositions were discounted and her reputation discredited in her lifetime and afterwards in both the US and China (where she became a Public Enemy under Mao).

This talk marks the ceremonial opening of the restored Pearl Buck House in Nanjing – the first official Chinese recognition of the unique role she played in relations between China and the West.

Hilary Spurling: Born in 1940 and educated at Somerville College, Oxford University, Hilary Spurling has written biographies of Ivy Compton-Burnett, Paul Scott and Sonia Orwell along with Henri Matisse in two volumes, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times biography prize in 2005.  Spurling’s latest bestseller, Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China, won the James Tait Black Prize last year. She is a CBE, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Hon. Trustee of the Royal Literary Fund, and founder of the RLF Writers Fellowship scheme.

Entrance: RMB 30.00 (RAS members) and RMB 80.00 (non-members). Those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to the RAS Lecture. Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.  Members will have priority booking until 27 May 2012. 

 

To RSVP:  Please “Reply” to this email or write to

RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

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