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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
Some
Civil War violence; racial violence in the historical context; one murder
Language
Barely any
Period language; Faulkner's dense Southern idiom
Sexual Content
Barely any
Incest is a central forbidden element of the backstory; not depicted
Substance Use
Some
Alcohol in the Southern setting
Emotional Intensity
A lot
The psychological weight of Southern guilt and complicity; the impossibility of escaping family history; narrative obscurity that challenges and rewards patience
What this book is about
In 1909, Harvard-bound Quentin Compson sits with the ancient Rosa Coldfield while she tells him the story of Thomas Sutpen, who arrived in Jefferson, Mississippi in 1833 with a band of enslaved people and a French architect, and built a plantation out of sheer will. His 'design' for a dynasty was destroyed by the Civil War, his own history, and a secret about his son Charles Bon that cannot be spoken. Faulkner's most ambitious novel—told through multiple unreliable narrators, decades of hindsight, and prose of almost impossible density—is a meditation on the sins of the South and the impossibility of escaping them.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Incest as a central forbidden backstory element
Racial violence in historical context
Extremely demanding prose that may challenge readers
Reader Verification
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