This book offers contemporary readers a sample of innovative approaches to interpreting and appreciating William Faulkner, who continues to inspire passionate readership worldwide. The essays here address a variety of topics in Faulkner's fiction, such as its reflection of the concurrent emergence of cinema, social inequality and rights movements, modern ways of imagining sexual identity and behavior, the South's history as a plantation economy and society, and the persistent effects of traumatic cultural and personal experience. This new Companion provides an introduction to the fresh ways Faulkner is being read in the twenty-first century, and bears witness to his continued importance as an American and world writer.