Released by Louisiana State University Press in April 1980, A
Confederacy of Dunces is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon.
Turned down by countless publishers and submitted by the author''s
mother years after his suicide, the book won the 1981 Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction. Today, there are over 1,500,000 copies in print
worldwide in eighteen languages." "Set in New Orleans, A
Confederacy of Dunces outswifts Swift, one of whose essays gives
the book its title. As its characters burst into life, they leave
the region and literature forever changed by their presences -
Ignatius and his mother; Miss Trixie, the octogenarian assistant
accountant at Levy Pants; inept, wan Patrolman Mancuso; Darlene,
the Bourbon Street stripper with a penchant for poultry; Jones, the
jivecat in space-age dark glasses. Satire and farce animate A
Confederacy of Dunces; tragic awareness ennobles it." "Louisiana
State University Press celebrates A Confederacy of Dunces''
twentieth year with this anniversary edition, which includes a new
introduction by Andrei Codrescu that examines the relationship of
this modern-day classic to the city whose pulse it so brilliantly
captures. Published a decade after the death of the author, this
wildly inventive comic masterpiece features one of the most
unforgettable characters in modern fiction: Ignatius Reilly, a
mammoth misfit Medievalist hilariously at odds with the
20th-century world.