Carson McCullers (Columbus, Georgia, 1917-New York, 1967) author of stories, essays, plays and novels, is considered, along with William Faulkner, one of the best representatives of the narrative of the southern United States. The early literary recognition of her equates her with authors such as Mary Shelley, Arthur Rimbaud or Clarice Lispector, novices who surprised with the rotundity and maturity of her literary debuts. When she was barely twenty-three years old, she published her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940), which obtained immediate critical and public success, which it continues to enjoy today. To that work are added five other novels that are among the best of twentieth-century North American literature.