A Confederacy of Dunces
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  • Published: 13 May 2011
  • ISBN: 9780241951590
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $26.00
Categories:

A Confederacy of Dunces

‘Probably my favourite book of all time’ Billy Connolly

Formats & editions
Paperback
13 May 2011
Paperback
22 Jun 2000
Hardback
14 Nov 2016
EBook
13 Jun 2019
Audiobook
28 Jul 2022
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Meet Ignatius J. Reilly: fat, flatulent, eloquent and almost unemployable

'This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians . . . don't make the mistake of bothering me.'

Ignatius J. Reilly: fat, flatulent, eloquent and almost unemployable. By the standards of ordinary folk he is pretty much unhinged, too. But is he bothered by this?

No. For this misanthropic crusader against an America fallen into vice and ignorance has a mission: to rescue a naked female philosopher in distress. And he has a pirate costume and hot-dog cart to do it with . . .
  • Published: 13 May 2011
  • ISBN: 9780241951590
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $26.00
Categories:

About the author

John Kennedy Toole


John Kennedy Toole was born in New Orleans in 1937. He received a master's degree in English from Columbia University and taught at Hunter College and at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He wrote A Confederacy of Dunces in the early sixties and tried unsuccessfully to get the novel published; depressed, at least in part by his failure to place the book, he committed suicide in 1969. It was only through the tenacity of his mother that her son's book was eventually published and found the audience it deserved. His long-suppressed novel The Neon Bible, written when he was only sixteen, was eventually published as well.

A Confederacy of Dunces won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Also by John Kennedy Toole

A Confederacy of Dunces: Popular Penguins
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Praise for A Confederacy of Dunces

I succumbed, stunned and seduced, page after page, vocal with delight. A masterwork of comedy

New York Times

A fine funny novel. This is the kind of book one wants to keep quoting from

Anthony Burgess

Every reviewer has loved it. For once, everyone is right

Rolling Stone