The years 1942 to 1954 saw Faulkner's greatest success--and greatest inner anguish. Plagued by depression and alcohol, he knew he had more to achieve and a finite amount of time and energy to achieve it. This volume gathers four groundbreaking works from this fascinating period. "Go Down, Moses" is a haunting novel that explores the intertwined lives of black, white, and Indian inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha County. It includes "The Bear," one of the most famous works in American fiction. "Intruder in the Dust," a detective novel, is a compassionate story of a black man on trial and the growing moral awareness of a southern white boy. "Requiem for a Nun" tells the fate of a passionate, haunted Temple Drake and her tortured redemption. "A Fable," Faulkner's recasting of the Christ story set in World War I, earned him the Pulitzer Prize.
Born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, William Faulkner was the son of a family proud of their prominent role in the history of the south. He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, and left high school at fifteen to work in his grandfather's bank.
Rejected by the US military in 1915, he joined the Canadian flyers with the RAF, but was still in training when the war ended. Returning home, he studied at the University of Mississippi and visited Europe briefly in 1925.
His first poem was published in The New Republic in 1919. His first book of verse and early novels followed, but his major work began with the publication of The Sound and the Fury in 1929. As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and The Wild Palms (1939) are the key works of his great creative period leading up to Intruder in the Dust (1948). During the 1930s, he worked in Hollywood on film scripts, notably The Blue Lamp, co-written with Raymond Chandler.
William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize for The Reivers just before his death in July 1962.
