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-es...