Reading Order
Absalom Absalom!William Faulkner Novels Reading Order Reading Order
William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (1936) is generally considered his greatest novel and one of the most formally challenging works in the American canon — the story of Thomas Sutpen, who arrives in antebellum Mississippi with a design to build a dynasty, told through multiple narrators who are attempting to reconstruct events that none of them fully witnessed and whose meaning remains irreducibly ambiguous. Faulkner described it as the story he most wanted to tell, the one about a man who wanted everything and lost everything, and the South that was built the same way and destroyed the same way.
Where to start
The Sound and the Fury
Complete Absalom Absalom! Book List
- 1Buy
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner·1929·Read The Sound and the Fury first — the Compson family's disintegration, told through four radically different perspectives; the essential Faulkner entry point and the best preparation for Absalom, Absalom!'s more complex multiple narration. - 2Buy
Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner·1936·Faulkner's most ambitious novel and his own favorite — the story of Thomas Sutpen's rise and fall in Yoknapatawpha, told through a series of narrators who are each trying and failing to make it make sense; demands and rewards patient, engaged reading. - 3Buy
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner·1930·Faulkner's most accessible difficult novel — fifteen narrators telling the story of the Bundren family's journey to bury their matriarch Addie; the best bridge between the relative accessibility of The Sound and the Fury and the full formal difficulty of Absalom, Absalom! - 4Buy
Light in August
William Faulkner·1932·The most accessible of the major Faulkner novels and the one most often recommended to first-time readers — the stories of Joe Christmas (a man of ambiguous racial identity) and Lena Grove (a pregnant woman searching for the father of her child) intertwined in Yoknapatawpha; the best entry point if The Sound and the Fury proves too difficult. - 5Buy
Go Down, Moses
William Faulkner·1942·Faulkner's linked story collection about the McCaslin family across multiple generations — the novel that most fully develops the themes of race, inheritance, and the moral burden of Southern history that Absalom, Absalom! introduces; essential for understanding the full scope of the Yoknapatawpha project.
Absalom Absalom! — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Absalom, Absalom! too difficult for new Faulkner readers?
Yes, for most readers. Absalom, Absalom! is Faulkner at his most formally challenging — multiple unreliable narrators, sentences that run for pages, chronology that loops and circles rather than proceeding linearly, and a story whose full meaning only becomes clear retrospectively. The Sound and the Fury is the usual recommended starting point; Light in August is the most accessible of the major novels. Readers who have read both and want to go further will find Absalom, Absalom! the most rewarding and the most difficult thing Faulkner wrote.
What is the significance of the title Absalom, Absalom!?
The title refers to the biblical story of Absalom, the beloved son of King David who rebels against his father and is killed — David's lament 'O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!' is the model for the novel's concern with fathers, sons, and the destruction of dynasties. Thomas Sutpen's sons — Charles Bon (the secret son from his first marriage) and Henry Sutpen (who kills Bon to prevent him from marrying their sister) — repeat the biblical pattern, and Sutpen's 'design' to build a dynasty mirrors David's ambition and meets the same catastrophic end.
Who are the narrators of Absalom, Absalom! and can they be trusted?
The story is told by four narrators: Rosa Coldfield (Sutpen's sister-in-law), Mr. Compson (the father from The Sound and the Fury), Quentin Compson (the son from The Sound and the Fury), and Quentin's Harvard roommate Shreve McCannon. None of them is fully reliable — Rosa's account is distorted by passion and resentment; Mr. Compson's by his characteristic fatalism; Quentin's by his identification with the material and his own psychological crisis; Shreve's by imaginative embroidery. The novel's argument is that the truth about the past is irrecoverable, that all accounts are partial and distorted, and that the meaning of historical events is constructed by the people who try to make sense of them rather than inherent in the events themselves.
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