When John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1981, it was widely regretted that the New Orleans native wrote only one book. It was later discovered that Toole penned this remarkable novel at the age of 16, and it is a gem. Living with his parents and his eccentric Aunt Mae, young David learns the ways of the world in 1940s Mississippi, in a town where conformity is everything. When his father is killed in the war, however, David will fight back against the forces of bigotry and contempt, with shocking results.

"Shockingly mature.... Even at sixteen, Toole knew that the way to write about complex emotions is to express them simply."—Chicago Tribune