A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole / ISBN 9780241284667 / 352-page book published in the Penguin Clothbound Classics series
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One of the BBC’s ‘100 Novels That Shaped Our World’
‘My favourite book of all time… it stays with you long after you have read it – for your whole life, in fact’ Billy Connolly
A monument to sloth, rant and contempt, a behemoth of fat, flatulence and furious suspicion of anything modern – this is Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, noble crusader against a world of dunces. The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged. Ignatius ignores them, heaving his vast bulk through the city’s fleshpots in a noble crusade against vice, modernity and ignorance. But his momma has a nasty surprise in store for him: Ignatius must get a job. Undaunted, he uses his new-found employment to further his mission – and now he has a pirate costume and a hot-dog cart to do it with…
This stunning clothbound edition of John Kennedy Toole’s savagely funny, satirical masterpiece is designed by the acclaimed Coralie-Bickford Smith.
‘A pungent work of slapstick, satire and intellectual incongruities … it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue’–The New York Times
