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Novel

Absalom, Absalom!

William Faulkner · 1936

Synopsis

September 1909, in Jefferson, Mississippi. Rosa Coldfield summons Quentin Compson, who is about to leave for Harvard, and tells him about Thomas Sutpen, whom she regards as the demon who ruined her family: arriving in 1833 with no known past, he returned with twenty slaves and a French architect, bought a hundred square miles from a Chickasaw, built a plantation and married Ellen, a merchant's daughter. That same evening, Quentin's father takes up the story; the following winter, Quentin reconstructs it with his Canadian roommate, who adds his own hypotheses.

Context

The book was written from February 1934 to January 1936, between two stays by its author in Hollywood, where he worked as a screenwriter to pay his debts, a trade he practised intermittently for more than twenty years. His younger brother, Dean, was killed in November 1935 at an air show, at the controls of the plane the writer had given him, and the writer long felt responsible; he took up the text again after the funeral. The volume is followed, at the publisher's request, by a chronology, a genealogy and a map of the imaginary county in which the author sets almost all his stories.

Who it is for

A long novel with multiple narrators and very long sentences, some of which run for several pages. Annotated editions provide a family tree and a chronology, often necessary.

Prizes and reception

Named in 2009 the greatest Southern novel by one hundred and thirty-four writers and academics surveyed by the Oxford American magazine.

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