A Confederacy of Dunces
A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero is one Ignatius J. Reilly, "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."
What you might want to know about A Confederacy of Dunces
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Ignatius J. Reilly is a thirty-year-old medieval-philosophy obsessive who lives with his mother in 1960s New Orleans. His half-hearted job hunt sends him through hot dog carts, French Quarter strip clubs, and one disaster of a protest.
Yes. A Confederacy of Dunces won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The award was posthumous: John Kennedy Toole died by suicide in 1969 after publishers rejected the manuscript. His mother spent more than a decade getting it published.
A Confederacy of Dunces is considered one of the great American comic novels, with Ignatius J. Reilly often listed among the most memorable protagonists in 20th-century literature. The novel's New Orleans setting and over-the-top characters have given it a passionate cult following.
A Confederacy of Dunces is 391 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, A Confederacy of Dunces takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
A Confederacy of Dunces is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
A Confederacy of Dunces is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
