The Crying of Lot 49

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

“The comedy crackles, the puns pop, the satire explodes.”—The New York Times

“The work of a virtuoso with prose . . . His intricate symbolic order [is] akin to that of Joyce’s Ulysses.”—Chicago Tribune

“A puzzle, an intrigue, a literary and historical tour de force.”—San Francsisco Examiner

The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy.

When her ex-lover, wealthy real-estate tycoon Pierce Inverarity, dies and designates her the coexecutor of his estate, California housewife Oedipa Maas is thrust into a paranoid mystery of metaphors, symbols, and the United States Postal Service. Traveling across Southern California, she meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge.