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...

Never published during his lifetime, John Kennedy Toole''s hilarious satire, A Confederacy of Dunces is a Don Quixote for the modern age, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes a foreword by Walker Percy.

''A pungent work of slapstick, satire and intellectual incongruities ... it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue''

The New York Times