Which John Kennedy Toole novel won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction after his death?

Which John Kennedy Toole novel won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction after his death? The answer is A Confederacy of Dunces. John Kennedy Toole died in 1969, but his comic novel was published posthumously in 1980 and won the Pulitzer the following year.

Set in New Orleans, the novel centers on Ignatius J. Reilly, an eccentric, obese medievalist who lives with his mother and resists ordinary employment. After she pressures him to find work, he moves through a colorful cast of characters and a sharply rendered city. The book’s satire targets hypocrisy, pretension, bureaucracy and social disorder, while its humor is rooted in distinctive voices and local detail.

The manuscript was eventually brought to publisher Walker Percy’s attention by Toole’s mother, Thelma. Louisiana State University Press published it after Percy helped champion the work. A common mix-up is Godric, which was a 1981 finalist, while Birdy and The Neon Bible were not the Pulitzer-winning title that year. The award was therefore both posthumous and unusually dependent on advocacy after the author’s death.