As I Lay Dying

A family's promise. A mother's corpse. A journey into the heart of madness.

So begins the most famous chapter in William Faulkner’s most unusual novel—a story told by fifteen different voices about a family’s journey to bury their dead.

Addie Bundren is dying. She has asked her husband, Anse, to bury her in the town of Jefferson, forty miles away. After she dies, the family sets out in a wagon with her body in a homemade coffin. The river floods. The bridge is out. The mules drown. The coffin falls into the water and floats away; they fish it out. The heat rots the body. Buzzards follow the wagon. The family’s children—Cash, who has broken his leg; Darl, who may be going mad; Jewel, who has sold his horse; Dewey Dell, who is pregnant and desperate for an abortion; and Vardaman, who has declared that his mother is a fish—each tell their own version of the story. By the time they reach Jefferson, Addie has been dead for nine days. Anse buys a new set of teeth and a new wife.

This is Faulkner at his most experimental and darkly comic: a novel about poverty, obsession, and the absurdity of keeping promises to the dead. As I Lay Dying is a masterpiece of multiple perspectives, a tragedy that is also a comedy, and a book that rewards every reading.

• Published in 1930, Faulkner’s sixth novel, written in just six weeks while he worked nights at a power plant

• Frequently ranked among the greatest novels of the twentieth century

• The novel’s fifteen narrators include a dying woman (in a single, unforgettable chapter), a young boy who confuses his mother with a fish, and a man who may be insane

Available in multiple formats:

• Paperback & Hardcover: Beautifully designed print editions presenting the complete, unabridged text made to last.

• Ebook: DRM-free EPUB compatible with Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and all major e-readers.

• Audiobook: Professionally narrated, complete and unabridged, available on all major audiobook platforms.

A beautifully crafted edition for your shelf, your device, or your ears—or the perfect gift for anyone who knows that the dead are heavier than the living, and the promises we make are heavier still.

About the Author

William Faulkner (1897–1962) was an American novelist and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Born in New Albany, Mississippi, he spent most of his life in Oxford, Mississippi, the model for his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. As I Lay Dying was his sixth novel, published in 1930. Faulkner wrote the novel in six weeks while working the night shift at the University of Mississippi power plant. He later claimed he wrote it without changing a word—a claim that scholars have debunked, but that captures the novel’s furious, improvisatory energy. The novel was not a commercial success in its time (it sold fewer than 3,000 copies in its first year), but it was praised by critics and has since become one of his most widely read works. His other major works include The Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and Go Down, Moses (1942). He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize twice. He died of a heart attack in 1962.