As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying is one of the most influential novels in American modernist literature, a groundbreaking work in which William Faulkner reshaped the possibilities of the novel through stream-of-consciousness narration, fractured perspectives, and stark emotional power.
Set in Faulkner's mythic Yoknapatawpha County, this Southern Gothic novel follows the Bundren family as they undertake a harrowing journey across Mississippi to bury their matriarch. Told through the voices of multiple narrators, each chapter reveals the inner lives, obsessions, and private griefs of a family bound together by duty, resentment, love, and loss. The result is an experimental narrative that is at once intimate, unsettling, and profoundly human.
A cornerstone of 20th-century American fiction, As I Lay Dying is widely taught in colleges and universities for its radical narrative technique and psychological depth. Readers encounter the defining features of modernist fiction-nonlinear storytelling, interior monologue, symbolic imagery, and moral ambiguity-rendered with Faulkner's unmatched intensity and precision.
At once a classic American novel, a Southern literature landmark, and a bold exploration of family, mortality, and identity, As I Lay Dying stands alongside The Sound and the Fury as one of Faulkner's most enduring achievements. Challenging, haunting, and unforgettable, it remains essential reading for students, scholars, and lovers of serious literary fiction.

William Faulkner (1897-1962) is one of the most influential writers in American literature and a central figure of the modernist movement. Best known for his innovative narrative techniques, complex psychological insight, and vivid portrayal of the American South, Faulkner transformed the novel through his bold use of stream-of-consciousness narration, fragmented structure, and multiple points of view.
Much of Faulkner's work is set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a richly imagined landscape that serves as the backdrop for many of his most celebrated novels, including As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Absalom, Absalom! His fiction explores enduring themes of family, memory, guilt, race, time, and moral conflict, earning him lasting recognition as a master of Southern Gothic and American modernist fiction.
In 1949, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his "powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel." His works remain widely read and taught in schools and universities worldwide, securing his place in the literary canon as a writer whose influence continues to shape contemporary literature.