Author
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner's 1929 novel traces the decline of the Compson family, once prominent in Jefferson, Mississippi, through four sections that each approach the same wreckage from a different angle. Three brothers, Benjy, Quentin and Jason, narrate in turn, followed by a third-person section centred on the family's Black housekeeper, Dilsey. The absent presence at the heart of it all is their sister Caddy. Known for its broken chronology and stream-of-consciousness prose, the book is both a demanding experiment in how fiction can render memory and a bleak portrait of family, class, race and time in the American South. It remains one of the classic novels to read for anyone curious about literary modernism.