Knight's Gambit

Informationen zum Autor WILLIAM FAULKNER was born in 1897 and raised in Oxford, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life. One of the towering figures of American literature, he is the author of The Sound and the Fury , As I Lay Dying , and Absalom, Absalom! , among many other remarkable books. Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1949 and France’s Legion of Honor in 1951. He died in 1962. Klappentext Gavin Stevens, the wise and forbearing student of crime and of the folk ways of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, plays the major role in these six stories of violence. In each, Stevens'sharp insights and ingenious detection uncover the underlying motives. Chapter One Smoke Anselm Holland came to Jefferson many years ago. Where from, no one knew. But he was young then and a man of parts, or of presence at least, because within three years he had married the only daughter of a man who owned two thousand acres of some of the best land in the county, and he went to live in his father-in-law's house, where two years later his wife bore him twin sons and where a few years later still the father-in-law died and left Holland in full possession of the property, which was now in his wife's name. But even before that event, we in Jefferson had already listened to him talking a trifle more than loudly of "my land, my crops"; and those of us whose fathers and grandfathers had been bred here looked upon him a little coldly and a little askance for a ruthless man and (from tales told about him by both white and negro tenants and by others with whom he had dealings) for a violent one. But out of consideration for his wife and respect for his father-in-law, we treated him with courtesy if not with regard. So when his wife, too, died while the twin sons were still children, we believed that he was responsible, that her life had been worn out by the crass violence of an underbred outlander. And when his sons reached maturity and first one and then the other left home for good and all, we were not surprised. And when one day six months ago he was found dead, his foot fast in the stirrup of the saddled horse which he rode, and his body pretty badly broken where the horse had apparently dragged him through a rail fence (there still showed at the time on the horse's back and flanks the marks of the blows which he had dealt it in one of his fits of rage), there was none of us who was sorry, because a short time before that he had committed what to men of our town and time and thinking was the unpardonable outrage. On the day he died it was learned that he had been digging up the graves in the family cemetery where his wife's people rested, among them the grave in which his wife had lain for thirty years. So the crazed, hate-ridden old man was buried among the graves which he had attempted to violate, and in the proper time his will was offered for probate. And we learned the substance of the will without surprise. We were not surprised to learn that even from beyond the grave he had struck one final blow at those alone whom he could now injure or outrage: his remaining flesh and blood. At the time of their father's death the twin sons were forty. The younger one, Anselm, Junior, was said to have been the mother's favorite-perhaps because he was the one who was most like his father. Anyway, from the time of her death, while the boys were still children almost, we would hear of trouble between Old Anse and Young Anse, with Virginius, the other twin, acting as mediator and being cursed for his pains by both father and brother; he was that sort, Virginius was. And Young Anse was his sort too; in his late teens he ran away from home and was gone ten years. When he returned he and his brother were of age, and Anselm made formal demand upon his father that the land which we now learned was held by Old Anse only in trust, be divided and he- Young Anse-be given his s...

Product details

• Authors: William Faulkner
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.11.2011
• EAN: 9780307946799
• ISBN: 978-0-307-94679-9
• No. of pages: 272
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 200 mm x 20 mm
• Series: VINTAGE BOOKS; Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense > Crime fiction, thrillers, espionage