Ol' Willy Faulkner invented a world. It wasn't just that each of his novels created full fictional universes, but that he envisioned and even mapped out a detailed imaginary place in which he set several of his novels. Welcome to Yoknapatawpha County in rural Mississippi.

The Sound and the Fury

In this novel, Faulkner tells the same story from several different points of view. This makes it especially difficult (yes, including for all of us at Shmoop—nobody chooses this novel as beach reading). The novel follows the quickly shifting stream of consciousness of several people, including one who is mentally incapacitated, and combines lyrical language with subject matter that shocked the prim and proper audiences of Faulkner's day.

"A Rose for Emily"

Spoiler alert: here be necrophilia. This short story exemplifies Faulkner's particularly pungent—no, seriously—brand of Southern Gothic.

As I Lay Dying

Telling a story from multiple points of view did the trick for Faulkner in his earlier novel, The Sound and the Fury, so he one-upped himself here. This book tells the story from fifteen—count 'em, fifteen—different perspectives. The story centers around the Bundren clan, off to bury the family's matriarch.