A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969) was an American novelist from New Orleans best known for his satirical novel A Confederacy of Dunces, published posthumously in 1980, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. He wrote his first novel, The Neon Bible, at age 16, later published in 1989. Facing repeated rejections during his life as a professor, he struggled with depression and died by suicide at age 31.