Reader's Choice

To read A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole (Penguin, £7.99 in UK), is to move to a town where the residents are all slightly cuckoo. To meet the unhinged hero, Ignatius J. Reilly, is to fall in step with lunacy. Forced to seek a job by his long-suffering mother, the obese and flatulent Ignatius stampedes his way through 1960s New Orleans, unleashing his bizarre world-view on an outlandish cast of characters. Floundering wildly from one crusade to the next, he bulldozes the reader's defences until there's nothing to do but leap headlong into the fray. We want him to succeed at something, anything and, in his own way, Toole grants us satisfaction. Ignatius's final escapade concludes with a strangely sweet and hopeful image, one that lingers on long after the riotous ride has ended.