Light in August

Light in August is one of the most representative works by Nobel laureate in Literature William Faulkner.

In Light in August some of Faulkner's most memorable characters are portrayed: the candid and intrepid Lena Grove in search of the father of her child; Reverend Gail Hightower, tormented by constant visions of Confederate cavalry soldiers, and Joe Christmas, a mysterious drifter consumed by the racial origins of his ancestors.

Faulkner, besides having been the creator of a narrative form that has powerfully influenced subsequent generations, was the chronicler of the most notable events, customs and characters of his land.

Light in August is one of the most representative works of a man who, working on history and giving free rein to his imagination, managed to become one of the most important writers of his century.

Critics have said:
«Faulkner delved into the shadows with emotion and talent that are hard to match [...]. Anyone curious about 20th-century novels in any language is obliged to read William Faulkner.»
Javier Marías

«Faulkner likes to present the novel through its characters. The method is not absolutely original, but Faulkner imbues it with an intensity that is almost intolerable.»
Jorge Luis Borges

«The link between Cervantes and Faulkner lies in the fact that both add something to the world, illustrate our spirit, by converting hidden worlds into liberated worlds: Faulkner through the tragic consciousness of pain and Cervantes through comedy and the idea that man will prevail.»
Carlos Fuentes

«Upon reading and re-reading Faulkner, it is impossible not to suspect that his gaze was different from ours, from that of ordinary men, from that of ordinary writers. Pausing over landscapes, people, circumstances, he saw something more than what was perceived by us [...]. He is, literarily, one of the greatest artists of the century.»
Juan Carlos Onetti

«Faulkner is a god.»
Jean-Paul Sartre

«The most radical innovator in the annals of American fiction, a writer whose classes should be attended by the European and Hispanic American avant-garde.»
J. M. Coetzee

«When a novelist manages to convey to the reader that peremptory, unappealable sensation that what he is telling could only happen that way—be told that way—he has triumphed completely.»
Mario Vargas Llosa

«When I read William Faulkner, I suddenly realized that prose could have the freedom and possible indiscipline of poetry.»
Michael Ondaatje