Light in August is a 1932 novel by the Southern American author William Faulkner. It belongs to the Southern gothic and modernist literary genres. Set in the author's present day, the interwar period, the novel centers on two strangers, a pregnant white woman and a man who passes as white but who believes himself to be of mixed ethnicity. In a series of flashbacks, the story reveals how these two people are connected to another man who has deeply impacted both their lives.