A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

"A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue."--The New York Times Book Review

A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "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" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).

John Kennedy Toole was born in 1937 and died in 1969 in New Orleans. He got a master's degree from Columbia University after graduating from Tulane University and taught at Hunter College, the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and Dominican College. While stationed in Puerto Rico and teaching English to new recruits, he wrote much of the initial draft of A Confederacy of Dunces.