The Sound and the Fury: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

The masterpiece of Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner, now in Penguin Classics for the first time, with a new introduction by Ayana Mathis, the New York Times bestselling author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper

The Sound and the Fury traces the decline of the American South through three generations of the once-powerful Compson family. In Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi–perhaps the most famous fictional setting in American literature–antiquated ideas of race, class, and sex prevail among the erstwhile landed gentry of the Reconstruction-era South, embodied in the Compson siblings: Benjy, whose mental disability blurs the past and the present; Quentin, who is consumed by his obsession with his family’s honor; Jason, who unleashes his blind rage on the rest of the household, especially their longtime Black servant, Dilsey; and their elusive sister, Caddy, whose tragic estrangement sets in motion the family’s fall from grace. A kaleidoscopic narrative punctuated by haunting interior monologues, The Sound and the Fury brings to life Faulkner’s aristocratic South as a land of decadence and despair, gallantry and greed in the face of financial and moral ruin. What Faulkner once considered his “most splendid failure” was also his favorite of his novels; it now ranks among the greatest novels of the twentieth century, and as one of the cornerstones of American fiction.

Author: William Faulkner
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published: 06/02/2026
Series: Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.7lbs
Size: 8.36h x 5.75w x 0.79d
ISBN: 9780143138853
Language: English