John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces

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