Released by Louisiana State University Press in 1980, A Confederacy of Dunces is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon. Rejected by countless publishers and submitted by the authors mother years after his suicide, the book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Today, there are almost two million copies in print worldwide in eighteen languages.

Tooles lunatic and sage novel introduces one of the most memorable characters in American literature, Ignatius Reilly, whom Walker Percy dubs "slob extraordinaire, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one." 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 presenceIgnatius and his mother; Miss Trixie, the octogenarian assistant accountant at Levi Pants; inept, wan Patrolman Mancuso; Darlene, the Bourbon Street stripper with a penchant for poultry; Jones the jivecat in spaceage dark glasses.