My Search for Warren Harding

Brought to you by Penguin.

Perfect for fans of A Confederacy of Dunces, this is Robert Plunket’s comic masterpiece: a breakneck, unhinged romp through 1980’s LA

Eliot Weiner – snob, shameless opportunist, Morris dancing-obsessive – is on a mission. He has got wind of a trunk of bawdy love letters by Warren Harding, ‘the shallowest President in history’, now guarded by his octogenarian mistress on her crumbling Hollywood Hills estate. They could reignite his failing academic career – and there’s no depth to which he won’t stoop, no preposterous scheme he won’t undertake, to get at them.

With an Introduction by Danzy Senna

‘One of the most original comic novels of the past half century’ The New Yorker

‘Will leave you so giddy you’ll go and kick sand in somebody’s face’ Houston Post

‘The author pulled me in so deftly, that after a hundred pages, I seemed to have turned over the keys, so to speak, of my nervous system’ Frank Conroy, Washington Post

‘A riotous debut: The Aspern Papers performed by the Brothers Marx’ Time

‘Nothing this funny is being written today’ Jacobin

© Robert Plunket 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025