Light In August: Faulkner Author (Oprah’s Book Club)

Light in August by Faulkner is only one of the exceptional literary works by this Nobel Prize winner. William Faulkner has been acknowledged as writing one of the greatest literary fictions in the 20th century. He has been referenced as setting a tone for Southern literature influencing writers decades later.

The story takes place in fictitious Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi where imagined lives of residents are told exploring love, family, and suffering. Published in 1932, Light in August is the seventh in the series of William Faulkner’s novels set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. The book tells the story of an orphan, Joe Christmas, whose mixed black-white heritage condemns him to life as an outsider who is hated by some folks and pitied by others.

Simon McEachern, the farmer who raises Joe, but who frequently whips him, is savagely beaten by Joe who then leaves home. Joe then wanders for 15 years and eventually meets a white woman, Joanna Burden, whose life is devoted to aiding blacks. But her evangelistic nature is a reminder to Joe of what Simon was. Still tormented from his childhood, Joe murders Joanna and subsequently flees. But a companion reveals his whereabouts and he is killed and castrated.