As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying is one of the most influential novels in American modernist literature, a groundbreaking work in which William Faulkner reshaped the possibilities of the novel through stream-of-consciousness narration, fractured perspectives, and stark emotional power.

Set in Faulkner’s mythic Yoknapatawpha County, this Southern Gothic novel follows the Bundren family as they undertake a harrowing journey across Mississippi to bury their matriarch. Told through the voices of multiple narrators, each chapter reveals the inner lives, obsessions, and private griefs of a family bound together by duty, resentment, love, and loss. The result is an experimental narrative that is at once intimate, unsettling, and profoundly human.

A cornerstone of 20th-century American fiction, As I Lay Dying is widely taught in colleges and universities for its radical narrative technique and psychological depth. Readers encounter the defining features of modernist fiction—nonlinear storytelling, interior monologue, symbolic imagery, and moral ambiguity—rendered with Faulkner’s unmatched intensity and precision.

At once a classic American novel, a Southern literature landmark, and a bold exploration of family, mortality, and identity, As I Lay Dying stands alongside The Sound and the Fury as one of Faulkner’s most enduring achievements. Challenging, haunting, and unforgettable, it remains essential reading for students, scholars, and lovers of serious literary fiction.