Pearl S. Buck, born as Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker, was an American writer most famous as the author of the best selling novel, ‘The Good Earth’ which won her a Pulitzer Prize. Though American by birth, she had spent almost half of her life in China and was raised in a bilingual environment. She is also known by her Chinese name, Sai Zhenzhu. A prolific writer, she published her first novel only when she was 39, but soon went on to write more than 70 other books, exploring a variety of genres. Buck chose China as the setting for the majority of her works. Her first novel, ‘East Wind, West Wind’ dealt with the themes of cultural understanding and acceptance while her second novel ‘The Good Earth’, revolved around the life of a family in a Chinese village before World War II. . She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938 "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces." Her body of work consisted of novels, biographies, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama, and children’s literature. She was also a humanitarian at heart and was committed to a wide range of issues like women’s rights, adoption, cultural values, immigration, and missionary work. As an adoptive mother, she established ‘Welcome House’, an international, interracial adoption agency which has placed several thousands of children in loving homes till date.