Heinz Rein was an influential German novelist writing before and after the Second World War. He became a major figure in the 'rubble literature' period and his famous novel Berlin Finale, published in 1947, was one of the first bestsellers in the tumultuous German rebuilding period. He abandoned East Germany for the West in the 1950s.

This postbellum Greek tragedy is the perfect introduction to Faulkner’s elaborate descriptive syntax. Quentin Compson and Shreve, his Harvard roommate, are obsessed with the tragic rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen. As a poor white boy, Sutpen was turned away from a plantation owner's mansion by a black butler.