The Sound and the Fury

“The past is never dead. It is not even past.”

William Faulkner’s most experimental and most beloved novel is a story told by three voices—one of them a man with the mind of a child—about a family falling apart and the one loyal servant who holds them together.

The Compson family has lost everything: their money, their honor, their reason. The novel is told in four sections. The first is narrated by Benjy, a thirty-three-year-old man with the intelligence of a small child. He cannot distinguish past from present; his memories crash into each other like waves. The second is narrated by Quentin, the brilliant, suicidal brother, obsessed with his sister’s virginity, drowning himself in the Charles River. The third is narrated by Jason, the bitter, cruel brother, consumed by greed and resentment. The fourth is told in the third person, following Dilsey, the Black servant who has raised the Compson children and who, alone among them, understands what love means.

This is Faulkner at his most daring and heartbreaking: a novel about the death of the Old South, the failure of family, and the one voice that speaks the truth—the voice of a woman who has been invisible to the people she serves.

• Published in 1929, Faulkner’s fifth novel and his first masterpiece

• Frequently ranked among the greatest novels of the twentieth century

• The novel’s title is taken from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.”

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 past is never dead. It is not even past.

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. The Sound and the Fury was his fifth novel, published in 1929, following Sartoris (1929). Faulkner wrote the novel while working nights at a power plant, and he later described it as his “most splendid failure.” The novel was not a commercial success at first—it sold fewer than 3,000 copies in its first year—but it was championed by critics and eventually recognized as a masterpiece. Faulkner included an appendix in later editions, tracing the Compson family history. His other major works include As I Lay Dying (1930), 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.