A Confederacy of Dunces introduces Ignatius J. Reilly, one of the most memorable characters in modern American fiction: a corpulent, overeducated, medievalist misfit who rails against the modern age from his mother's home in New Orleans. Armed with a lute-like worldview, a rebellious digestive tract, and an unshakeable sense of his own genius, Ignatius is forced by circumstance to do the unthinkable — find a job.
His misadventures — from a doomed stint at Levy Pants to a hot-dog cart he treats as a personal fiefdom — send him caroming through a gallery of unforgettable New Orleans characters: his long-suffering mother Irene, the sharp-eyed Burma Jones, the hapless Patrolman Mancuso, and his radical pen-pal nemesis Myrna Minkoff. Their crossing paths build toward a comic catastrophe of operatic proportions.
Written by John Kennedy Toole and published in 1980, more than a decade after his death, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and has become a beloved American comic classic — a riotous, humane, and endlessly quotable portrait of a singular mind at war with the world.