A Fable.

FAULKNER, William.

Item Number: 137812

New York: Random House, 1954.

First edition of the first novel to win both Pulitzer and National Book Award. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed by William Faulkner on the title page. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Riki Levinson. Signed first editions are rare.

The Fable won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1955. An allegorical story of World War I, set in the trenches in France and dealing ostensibly with a mutiny in a French regiment, it was originally considered a sharp departure for Faulkner. Recently it has come to be recognized as one of his major works and an essential part of the Faulkner oeuvre. Faulkner himself fought in the war, and his descriptions of it "rise to magnificence," according to The New York Times, and include, in Malcolm Cowley's words, "some of the most powerful scenes he ever conceived." Petersen A31b