Buck wrote a draft of The Exile immediately after her mother's death in 1921, pouring her raw emotions into this heroic, loving portrait. However, the book was not published until January, 1936. It was such a critical and popular success that Buck immediately set to writing a companion biography of her father, Fighting Angel, which was published later that year to similar acclaim. When, in 1938, Pearl S. Buck became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it was not only "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China" but also "for her biographical masterpieces."
As well as being a beautifully written account of a dramatic life, The Exile reveals Buck herself more deeply than in her other works, showing the profound influence her mother had on Buck's life and her novels.