Pulitzer Prize Fiction Winner

The Reivers

by William Faulkner

Summary

In Yoknapatawpha County in 1905, an eleven-year-old boy joins a family servant and a roguish handyman in commandeering his grandfather's automobile for an unsanctioned trip to Memphis. Faulkner adopts a warm, reminiscent first-person voice and a comic picaresque shape, treating boyhood transgression as a rite of passage rather than a tragedy. It is the most genial and accessible of his major novels and an unusual valedictory for his Mississippi cycle.

Historical Context & Significance

A posthumous win for Faulkner; it is one of his most accessible and lighthearted works, contrasting sharply with his earlier, darker tragedies.