A Confederacy of Dunces - Evergreen Book 20th Edition by John Kennedy Toole Paperback

About the Book

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has sold over three-quarters of a million copies and continues to earn critical acclaim. The story of one Ignatius J. Reilly, a "Don Quixote of the French Quarter", it is a masterpiece of human folly and tragedy.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue."--The New York Times Book Review

A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).

Review Quotes

Winner of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize

A LeVar Burton x Fable Book Club Pick

"A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue."--The New York Times Book Review

"A corker, an epic comedy, a rumbling, roaring avalanche of a book."--The Washington Post

"An astonishingly good novel, radiant with intelligence and artful high comedy."--Newsweek

"One of the funniest books ever written . . . it will make you laugh out loud till your belly aches and your eyes water."--The New Republic

"The episodes explode one after the other like fireworks on a stormy night. No doubt about it, this book is destined to become a classic."--The Baltimore Sun

"The dialogue is superbly mad. You simply sweep along, unbelievably entranced."--The Boston Globe

"An astonishingly original and assured comic spree."--New York Magazine

"As hilarious as it indisputably is, A Confederacy of Dunces is a serious and important work."-- Los Angeles Herald Examiner

"If a book's price is measured against the laughs it provokes, A Confederacy of Dunces is the bargain of the year." -- Time

"A brilliant and evocative novel." --San Francisco Chronicle

"I found myself laughing out loud again and again as I read this ribald book." --Christian Science Monitor

"Crazy magnificent once-in-a-blue-moon first novel. . . . There is a touch of genius about Toole and what he has created." --Publishers Weekly

"A masterpiece of character comedy . . . brilliant, relentless, delicious, perhaps even classic." --Kirkus Reviews

"Astonishing, extravagant, lunatic, satiric, and peculiar, but it is above all genuine, skillful, and unsentimentally comic." --Booklist

Ignatius J. Reilly is Bette Midler's favorite hero of fiction (Vanity Fair, August 2008)

About the Author

John Kennedy Toole, a native of New Orleans, graduated from Tulane University and received a master's degree in English from Columbia University. He taught at Hunter College, the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and Dominican College in New Orleans. His only other novel, The Neon Bible, is also published by Grove Press.