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In 1929, working night shifts at the University of Mississippi power house in Oxford, William Faulkner began As I Lay Dying: fifteen narrators and a family carrying their mother’s coffin to be buried in the town of Jefferson. That same year he published The Sound and the Fury, whose first section is told by Benjy Compson, a man with a cognitive disability for whom past and present arrive at once. For Absalom, Absalom! (1936) he drew a map of his invented Yoknapatawpha County, gave its population as 6,298 white and 9,313 Black residents, and signed himself ‘sole owner & proprietor’. The Nobel Prize followed in 1949. In May 2026 Norton issued a new critical edition of The Sound and the Fury, edited by Michael Gorra. The ten writers below share what readers come to him for: the past alive in the present, one place mapped down to its families, and a story told by voices that never quite agree.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Southern literature · Modernism · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
If you love William Faulkner, start with Toni Morrison, who wrote her 1955 master’s thesis partly on him and whose Beloved (1987) takes on the history his novels circle. For an invented place mapped down to its families, read Gabriel García Márquez, who called Faulkner his master, and for Mississippi now, Jesmyn Ward. The list also goes back to the European modernists he learned from.
10 authors like William Faulkner
Where to start if you loved William Faulkner
If you loved As I Lay Dying, read Jesmyn Ward.
Sing, Unburied, Sing: a family journey across Mississippi, told in turns, with a ghost along for the ride.
If you loved Absalom, Absalom!, read Toni Morrison.
Beloved: a past that will not stay buried.
If you loved Yoknapatawpha, read Gabriel García Márquez.
One Hundred Years of Solitude: one invented town, one family, seven generations.
If you want somewhere shorter to begin, read Juan Rulfo.
Pedro Páramo: a short novel of voices, most of them dead.
If you want more Faulkner, start with As I Lay Dying.
It is the most approachable of his major novels; then read The Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August (1932) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936).
Frequently asked questions about authors like William Faulkner
Who writes like William Faulkner?
Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez and Jesmyn Ward are the closest. Morrison wrote her master’s thesis partly on him, García Márquez called him his master, and Ward writes Mississippi families in several voices with the dead still present.
What should I read after As I Lay Dying?
Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo (1955) both pair a journey with a chorus of voices, some of them dead.
What books are like The Sound and the Fury?
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) and James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) use the same stream of consciousness. Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) shares its broken chronology and a family undone by its past.
Which Faulkner book should I read first?
As I Lay Dying (1930) is the most approachable of his major novels. Read The Sound and the Fury (1929) once you are used to his shifting narrators, and keep Absalom, Absalom! (1936) for later.
Is Cormac McCarthy like Faulkner?
Yes, especially in his early Tennessee novels: long sentences, a violent South, and the same editor, Albert Erskine, who had been Faulkner’s last editor. McCarthy is bleaker and less interested in family history. In 2024 Vanity Fair reported his relationship with Augusta Britt, which began when she was 16.
Is there anything new from William Faulkner?
Norton published a new Norton Critical Edition of The Sound and the Fury, edited by Michael Gorra, in May 2026. The novel entered the US public domain on 1 January 2025.
Sources
- William Faulkner — Wikipedia
- The Sound and the Fury, Norton Critical Edition — W. W. Norton
- Literary icon Toni Morrison, M.A. ’55, dies at 88 — Cornell Chronicle
- Obituary Note: Cormac McCarthy — Shelf Awareness
List last reviewed 30 October 2026.
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