This wildly inventive comic masterpiece exploded on the literary scene like a time bomb in 1980. The rest is publishing history. Critics and readers adored "A Confederacy of Dunces, " and the book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

"A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero is one Ignatius J. Reilly, huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, and a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original character, 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