Light in August

'Burns throughout with a fierce indignation against cruelty, stupidity and prejudice ... a great book' Spectator A landmark in American fiction, Light in August explores Faulkner's central theme: the nature of evil. In this work, written during his brilliant mature period, Joe Christmas - a man doomed, deracinated and alone wanders the Deep South of the United States in search of an identity, and a place in society. After killing his perverted God-fearing lover, it becomes inevitable that he is pursued by a lynch-hungry mob. Yet after the sacrifice there is new life, a determined ray of light in Faulkner's complex and tragic world. 'One of the great figures of international modernist experiment - a writer with the range, capacities, and formal preoccupations we associate with Joyce, Proust or Virginia Woolf, an experimenter, a symbolist, a witness to modern exile' Malcolm Bradbury