As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying is a 1930 Southern Gothic[1] novel by American author William Faulkner. Faulkner said that he wrote the novel from midnight to 4:00 a.m. over the course of six weeks and that he did not change a word of it.[2] Faulkner wrote it while working at a power plant. The novel was published in 1930, and Faulkner described it as a "tour de force." Faulkner's fifth novel, it is consistently ranked among the best novels of 20th-century literature.[3][4][5] The title derives from Book XI of Homer's Odyssey (William Marris's 1925 translation), wherein Agamemnon tells Odysseus: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades."