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This book discusses John K. Toole´s novel A Confederacy of Dunces and is divided into four parts. In the first part the author focuses on the short life of John Kennedy Toole (1937 born in New Orleans, LA, he committed suicide in Biloxi, MS, in 1969). Toole wrote only two novels, one in his last years at highschool, which is patterned after the southern Gothic fiction of F.O´Connor, whom he greatly admired. His major work A Confederacy of Dunces was never published during his life time. Years later his mother found in Walker Percy a great supporter for the publication of his masterpiece, which granted him posthumously the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. The second part concentrates on exploring the different characters above all Ignatius Reilly, the anti-hero of the novel. The third part discusses the underlying themes of the novel such as religion and clash of world views, sexuality and innocence and corruption of childhood. In the last part, the author tries to find traces of and similarities with Flannery O´Connor concerning both as writers of grotesque fiction. The present book can be considered as a good source for students and readers of modern American literature.

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Gudrun Gissinger received her Magister degree in English Literature and Educational Science from the University in Vienna, Austria. She currently lives and works as a teacher at in Styria.

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