DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Light in August" by William Faulkner. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

From the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulkner—also available are Snopes, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner was a master of the short story. Most of the pieces in this collection are drawn from the greatest period in his writing life, the fifteen or so years beginning in 1929, when he published The Sound and the Fury. They explore many of the themes found in the novels and feature characters of small-town Mississippi life that are uniquely Faulkner’s. In “A Rose for Emily,” the first of his stories to appear in a national magazine, a straightforward, neighborly narrator relates a tale of love, betrayal, and murder. The vicious family of the Snopes trilogy turns up in “Barn Burning,” about a son’s response to the activities of his arsonist father. And Jason and Caddy Compson, two other inhabitants of Faulkner’s mythical Yoknapatawpha County, are witnesses to the terrorizing of a pregnant black laundress in “That Evening Sun.” These and the other stories gathered here attest to the fact that Faulkner is, as Ralph Ellison so aptly noted, “the greatest artist the South has produced.” Including these stories: “Barn Burning” “Two Soldiers” “A Rose for Emily” “Dry September” “That Evening Sun” “Red Leaves” “Lo!” “Turnabout” “Honor” “There Was a Queen” “Mountain Victory” “Beyond” “Race at Morning”

Light in August (1932) is one of William Faulkner's most important, most challenging, and most widely studied novels, demanding to be approached from many angles and with a variety of critical and scholarly skills. Here five distinguished critics offer just such a range of approaches, discussing the novel in terms of its composition and its place in Faulkner's oeuvre; its structure and narrative techniques; its relation to the religious, racial, and sexual assumptions of the society it depicts; its presentation of women and handling of gender-related issues; and the social and moral implications of the 'hero' status accorded to a figure like Joe Christmas. Each contributor has had a double ambition: to write clearly and directly, thus making the volume accessible to the widest possible audience, and to write freshly and originally, so as to enhance - even for those thoroughly familiar with the existing criticism - understanding and appreciation of Light in August itself and of Faulkner's work as a whole.

Title of reader's guide: William Faulkner: a reading experience.

Cliffs Notes Presents a clear discussion and a concise interpretation of the merits and significance.

Light in August is William Faulkner's seventh novel, but the fifth set in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. Published in 1932, the novel is a compelling portrait of Southern society. It traces the history of a group of characters shaped by and responding to the religious, cultural, and racial traditions of the American South. Faulkner contrasts the story of Joe Christmas, whose unclear parentage makes him a target for the town's hatred, with the placid tale of Lena Grove's search for her lover. While Joe's story is created by prejudice, hatred, and mistrust, Lena's story is one of simple country people whose honor, courage, and affections are uncorrupted by either the past or the modern world. Alwyn Berland illuminates the relationship between these contrasting stories, demonstrating how Southern Calvinism, both as a theme and as an unconscious influence on Faulkner, is the key to a small cluster of themes that connects seemingly unrelated threads of narrative. Berland's study offers a detailed and accessible examination of Faulkner's style, and discusses how his modernist and experimental techniques are related to his vision of human experience. Berland places Faulkner's achievement in the context of the ideas that interested him, Southern literary tradition, and his influences on his contemporaries and later writers. The only booklength study of this novel available, Berland's work will be of great value to Faulkner scholars, students of Southern literature, and those interested in the development of the novel in the twentieth century.

A glossary that will lead readers through the complexities of one of William Faulkner's major works