As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner · 1897–1962 · USA

Why it matters

Fifteen narrators haul their mother's coffin across flooding Mississippi, including, once, the dead woman. Written in six weeks on night shifts at a power plant; 'My mother is a fish' remains fiction's strangest perfect chapter.

At a glance

Fifteen shifting narrators, including a dead one, scramble chronology and voice deliberately.