Light in August (The Corrected Text)

A shocking act of murder and arson in Prohibition-era Mississippi entangles an assortment of memorable misfits in this novel from Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner. With a new introduction by Jay Parini.

Sweet, hopeful Lena Grove has trekked miles on foot in search of the runaway bootlegger who fathered her unborn child. In the town of Jefferson, she finds instead shy and honorable Byron Bunch, who assists Lena in her quest while quietly adoring her. The town’s history-haunted outcasts include disgraced Reverend Gail Hightower, plagued by visions of his Confederate grandfather; Joanna Burden, a despised descendant of abolitionist carpetbaggers; and Joe Christmas, a desperate drifter tormented by his suspected mixed-race ancestry. As these characters converge, Faulkner vividly depicts a world in which no one can escape the weight of the past.

WILLIAM 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.

JAY PARINI is a poet, novelist, and biographer, and professor of English at Middlebury College. His novels include The Last Station (adapted as an Academy Award-nominated film and translated into more than thirty languages), Benjamin’s Crossing, and The Passages of H.M. He has written biographies of Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, Gore Vidal, William Faulkner, and Jesus. Among his nonfiction books are Borges and Me, Why Poetry Matters, and Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America.