Soldiersâ Pay
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Set after the conclusion of World War I, Pulitzer Prizeâwinning author William Faulknerâs first novel explores the warâs emotional impact on weary veterans as they travel by train across the United States to their Georgia hometown. The condition of one soldierâscarred, blind, and nearly muteâinspires fellow travelers to see him home safely to a family that believes him deadâand a fiancÊe who has moved on.
With experimental narrative techniques mixed with literary modernism, this early Faulkner classic captures the atmosphere of Americaâs Lost Generation and marked the beginning of the authorâs legacy as one of the most influential fiction writers in American history.
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William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. His family was rooted in local history: his great-grandfather, a Confederate colonel and state politician, was assassinated by a former partner in 1889, and his grandfather was a wealth lawyer who owned a railroad. When Faulkner was five his parents moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he received a desultory education in local schools, dropping out of high school in 1915. Rejected for pilot training in the U.S. Army, he passed himself off as British and joined the Canadian Royal Air Force in 1918, but the war ended before he saw any service. After the war, he took some classes at the University of Mississippi and worked for a time at the university post office. Mostly, however, he educated himself by reading promiscuously.
Keith Szarabajka has appeared in many films, including The Dark Knight, Missing, and A Perfect World, and on such television shows as The Equalizer, Angel, Cold Case, Golden Years, and Profit. Szarabajka has also appeared in several episodes of Selected Shorts for National Public Radio. He won the 2001 Audie Award for Unabridged Fiction for his reading of Tom Robbinsâs Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and has won several Earphones Awards.
