As I Lay Dying cover art

As I Lay Dying

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As I Lay Dying

By: William Faulkner, Jesmyn Ward - introduction
Narrated by: Marc Cashman, Robertson Dean, Lina Patel, Lorna Raver, Jesmyn Ward
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About this listen

 A true 20th-century classic from the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Sound and the Fury: the famed harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother.

As I Lay Dying is one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama. Narrated in turn by each of the family members, including Addie herself as well as others, the novel ranges in mood from dark comedy to the deepest pathos.

“I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force. Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last period would fall.” —William Faulkner on As I Lay Dying

This edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Noel Polk.

Cover photograph: © Eggleston Artistic Trust. Courtesy Eggleston Artistic Trust and David Zwirner.(P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc. Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Mississippi

Critic Reviews

"For range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, variety of characterization, humor, and tragic intensity, [Faulkner's works] are without equal in our time and country."
--Robert Penn Warren
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Struggled to finish. An impressive concept by Faulkner but struggled with the many and varied characters and their specific language and thought processes.

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I was supposed to read this at uni, back in the day. The concept of different voices and points of view was probably revolutionary in its time. It has many perspectives that are unheard (proto-woke) but ordinary people aren’t very profound. The author captures the voices of rural America… The reading is too good, poor people don’t actually talk that way, they are poor and uneducated; they are not professional actors doing a side job.
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Finally finished it

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.