Light in August

A pregnant woman walking alone through Mississippi. A man who may be part Black and does not know it. A minister who has lost his faith. And a novel about the impossibility of escape.

William Faulkner’s masterpiece of race, identity, and violence is one of the great American novels—a story about people trapped by the past, and the few who manage, against all odds, to keep walking.

Lena Grove, young, pregnant, and improbably serene, walks from Alabama to Mississippi in search of the man who promised to marry her. She never doubts that she will find him. Her journey is the novel’s thread. Around her, Faulkner weaves the stories of Joe Christmas, a man of uncertain racial heritage who has been running from himself his entire life; Gail Hightower, a disgraced minister who sits in his window watching the ghosts of Confederate cavalry ride past; and Joanna Burden, a Northern woman who tries to save Joe Christmas and is murdered for her trouble. The novel builds toward a lynching, a fire, and an image of Lena Grove, still walking, still serene, still carrying her baby toward an uncertain future.

This is Faulkner at his most compassionate and furious: a novel about the poison of racism, the loneliness of the outsider, and the stubborn, miraculous endurance of a woman who refuses to stop walking.

• Published in 1932, following Sanctuary and preceding Absalom, Absalom!

• Considered by many critics to be Faulkner’s most accessible major novel

• Explores themes of race, gender, religion, and the haunting power of the past in the American South

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 light in August is different from the light in any other month.

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. Light in August was his seventh novel, published in 1932. It was critically acclaimed and remains one of his most widely read works. Faulkner wrote the novel quickly—in about six months—after the commercial disappointment of Sanctuary. The novel’s title refers to the quality of light in late summer in Mississippi, which Faulkner described as “the luminous quality of the light in August.” His other major works include The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and Go Down, Moses (1942). Faulkner received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize twice. He died of a heart attack in 1962.