It describes the lives of Chinese peasants in a village outside Nanjing, China, immediately prior to and during the Japanese invasion in 1937.

This story focuses less on the details of the attack and more on the characters’ reactions to the events in Nanking.

Buck opines in the novel that Japanese troops passing through China feel no responsibility for their conduct as they won’t be present to be confronted after the violence is over.

Unlike Buck's earlier novel The Good Earth, Dragon Seed is entirely fictional and based on her own secondhand thoughts rather than personal experience.

[3] In 1944 Dragon Seed was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a film starring Katharine Hepburn, Turhan Bey, Walter Huston and Aline MacMahon.