Flags in the Dust

the long version

From the 1974 paperback cover blurb: The complete text, published for the first time in 1973, of Faulkner's third novel, written when he was twenty-nine, which appeared, with his reluctant consent, in a much cut version in 1929 as Sartoris. "In either version, Sartoris or Flags in the Dust is an outstanding work…The shorter version, in effect, ‘tidies up' Faulkner's erratic prose. But Faulkner was about as impossible to tidy up, to civilize, as was Huck Finn—and Flags in the Dust, consequently, is a better book than Sartoris.”—Philip Corwin, National Observer "A rich and rewarding reading experience…the first of Faulkner's mature fiction."—Panthea Broughton, Saturday Review "A marvellously intense, highly overwritten, deeply felt exploration by a young writer of the themes of chivalry, race, death and survival."—Business Week