Faulkner’s fifth novel follows a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren’s family sets out to fulfill her final wish: to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life. Told through the perspective of multiple family members, including Addie herself, As I Lay Dying vividly brings to life Faulkner’s recurring Yoknapatawpha County, one of literature’s great invented landscapes, and is replete with the poignant, impoverished, violent, and hypnotically fascinating characters that were his trademark.

An influential novel of the Modernism literary movement in narrative structure, style, and characterization, Faulkner employs 15 different points of view and a stream-of-consciousness technique that depicts each characters’ psychological hardships. Ranging in tone from dark comedy, to deepest pathos, As I Lay Dying is a tour de force that captures the heart of the American South during the Great Depression and encompasses the work of a master at the height of his craft.