Penguin Essentials: A Confederacy of Dunces

A Masterpiece of Misanthropy and Madness

"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."

Meet Ignatius J. Reilly: fat, flatulent, eloquent, and almost entirely unemployable. By the standards of "ordinary" folk, he is arguably unhinged—a modern-day Don Quixote trapped in 1960s New Orleans. But Ignatius is far from bothered. A self-styled medievalist and misanthropic crusader against an America he believes has fallen into vice and ignorance, he is a man on a mission.

Armed with a pirate costume, a hot-dog cart, and a profound sense of intellectual superiority, Ignatius sets out to rescue a "naked female philosopher" in distress. John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Confederacy of Dunces is a riotous, sprawling, and darkly comic odyssey. It is a brilliant satire of the human condition and a cult classic that features one of the most unforgettable—and infuriating—characters in all of literature.