The masterpiece of Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner, now in Penguin Classics for the first time, with a new introduction by Ayana Mathis, the New York Times bestselling author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper
The Sound and the Fury traces the decline of the American South through three generations of the once-powerful Compson family. In Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi—perhaps the most famous fictional setting in American literature—antiquated ideas of race, class, and sex prevail among the erstwhile landed gentry of the Reconstruction-era South, embodied in the Compson siblings: Benjy, whose mental disability blurs the past and the present; Quentin, who is consumed by his obsession with his family’s honor; Jason, who unleashes his blind rage on the rest of the household, especially their longtime Black servant, Dilsey; and their elusive sister, Caddy, whose tragic estrangement sets in motion the family’s fall from grace. A kaleidoscopic narrative punctuated by haunting interior monologues, The Sound and the Fury brings to life Faulkner’s aristocratic South as a land of decadence and despair, gallantry and greed in the face of financial and moral ruin. What Faulkner once considered his “most splendid failure” was also his favorite of his novels; it now ranks among the greatest novels of the twentieth century, and as one of the cornerstones of American fiction.
“Astounding . . . Fiercely singular . . . With every new reading, it rewards my devotion by revealing some previously unseen nuance. . . . It is evergreen, as relevant today as when it was published nearly one hundred years ago. . . . It is beautiful. . . . Faulkner’s beauty is formidable, pugilistic even, it irrupts into our senses and sensibilities. . . . To read Faulkner is to grapple with the endlessly reverberating history described in his pages. . . . [His is] a voice that cuts through the detritus of false narrative, false history, false senses of self. A voice that tells us about who we are and who we have been, and warns us about where we are headed.” —Ayana Mathis, from the Introduction
The masterpiece of Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner, now in Penguin Classics for the first time, with a new introduction by Ayana Mathis, the New York Times bestselling author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper
The Sound and the Fury traces the decline of the American South through three generations of the once-powerful Compson family. In Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi—perhaps the most famous fictional setting in American literature—antiquated ideas of race, class, and sex prevail among the erstwhile landed gentry of the Reconstruction-era South, embodied in the Compson siblings: Benjy, whose mental disability blurs the past and the present; Quentin, who is consumed by his obsession with his family’s honor; Jason, who unleashes his blind rage on the rest of the household, especially their longtime Black servant, Dilsey; and their elusive sister, Caddy, whose tragic estrangement sets in motion the family’s fall from grace. A kaleidoscopic narrative punctuated by haunting interior monologues, The Sound and the Fury brings to life Faulkner’s aristocratic South as a land of decadence and despair, gallantry and greed in the face of financial and moral ruin. What Faulkner once considered his “most splendid failure” was also his favorite of his novels; it now ranks among the greatest novels of the twentieth century, and as one of the cornerstones of American fiction.
Praise
“Astounding . . . Fiercely singular . . . With every new reading, it rewards my devotion by revealing some previously unseen nuance. . . . It is evergreen, as relevant today as when it was published nearly one hundred years ago. . . . It is beautiful. . . . Faulkner’s beauty is formidable, pugilistic even, it irrupts into our senses and sensibilities. . . . To read Faulkner is to grapple with the endlessly reverberating history described in his pages. . . . [His is] a voice that cuts through the detritus of false narrative, false history, false senses of self. A voice that tells us about who we are and who we have been, and warns us about where we are headed.” —Ayana Mathis, from the Introduction
