Absalom, Absalom!

Front Cover
Random House Publishing Group, Nov 9, 1993 - Fiction - 432 pages
From the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulkner—also available are Snopes, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Selected Short Stories

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

First published in 1936, Absalom, Absalom! is William Faulkner’s ninth novel and one of his most admired. It tells the story of Thomas Sutpen and his ruthless, single-minded attempt to forge a dynasty in Jefferson, Mississippi, in 1830. Although his grand design is ultimately destroyed by his own sons, a century later the figure of Sutpen continues to haunt young Quentin Compson, who is obsessed with his family legacy and that of the Old South. “Faulkner’s novels have the quality of being lived, absorbed, remembered rather than merely observed,” noted Malcolm Cowley. “Absalom, Absalom! is structurally the soundest of all the novels in the Yoknapatawpha series—and it gains power in retrospect.” This edition follows the text of Absalom, Absalom! as corrected in 1986 under the direction of Faulkner expert Noel Polk and features a new Foreword by John Jeremiah Sullivan.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
28
Section 3
58
Section 4
90
Section 5
133
Section 6
138
Section 7
177
Section 8
178
Section 12
389
Section 13
391
Section 14
392
Section 15
393
Section 16
395
Section 17
396
Section 18
400
Section 19
401

Section 9
221
Section 10
299
Section 11
367
Section 20
403
Section 21
405
Copyright

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About the author (1993)

WILLIAM CUTHBERT FAULKNER was born in 1897 and raised in Oxford, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life. One of the towering figures of American literature, he is the author of The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, and As I Lay Dying, among many other  remarkable books. Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1950 and France’s Legion of Honor in 1951. He died in 1962.

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