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The Sound and the Fury

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The Sound and the Fury

By: William Faulkner, Casey Cep - introduction
Narrated by: Grover Gardner, Gabra Zackman
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About this listen

 NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century is the story of a family of Southern aristocrats on the brink of personal and financial ruin. • The definitive corrected text, including Faulkner's Appendix

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

“I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire.... I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” —from The Sound and the Fury

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 Heartfelt Rage American Depression Fiction

Critic Reviews

“I am in awe of Faulkner’s Benjy, James’s Maisie, Flaubert’s Emma, Melville’s Pip, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—each of us can extend the list.... I am interested in what prompts and makes possible this process of entering what one is estranged from.” —Toni Morrison

“No man ever put more of his heart and soul into the written word than did William Faulkner. If you want to know all you can about that heart and soul, the fiction where he put it is still right there.” —Eudora Welty
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Loved the story, writing and utterly dispassionate telling of a sad situation. I had to keep stopping to read something more cheerful.

Great writing: some very sad truths

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A classic. The style is difficult and it’s often hard to keep track of the story but the characters are so wonderful and well drawn they pull you in. None of the characters are entirely sympathetic yet neither are they unsympathetic and that is what makes them so real

Difficult but worth it

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Brilliant reading, brilliant story. Much less obscure when listened to than read. Once again, phenomenal.

Phenomenal

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the first part is near impossible to follow without the text; it relies on italics signposting what is happening when. otherwise great production.

First part not great as audio...

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An extremely complicated stream of consciousness novel, this was almost impossible to get into and hard to enjoy. It would be best I think if you followed the text as you listened.

Too complex for audio I think

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