William Styron, The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice / William Clark Styron

Lie Down in Darkness is William Styron’s stunning debut: a classic portrait of one Southern family’s tragic spiral into destruction. Set This House on Fire is a story of evil and redemption involving three American men whose paths converge on a film shoot in Italy at the close of the 1940s, hailed as “one of the finest novels of our time” by the San Francisco Chronicle.Gripping and unforgettable, The Confessions of Nat Turner is the Pulitzer-winning portrait of the leader of America’s bloodiest slave revolt. And Sophie’s Choice is the National Book Award–winning novel of love, survival, and regret, set in Brooklyn in the wake of the Second World War.

Taken together, these four novels—exploring themes of good and evil, sin and atonement, and the ineradicable bonds of place and family—represent Styron at the pinnacle of his literary brilliance.