The Crying of Lot 49

Author: Pynchon, Thomas

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 6 June 1996 by Vintage Publishing (Vintage Classics) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 160 pages
196 x 130 x 8 | 120g

By far the shortest of Pynchons great, dazzling novels - and one of the best.

Suffused with rich satire, chaotic brilliance, verbal turbulence and wild humour, The Crying of Lot 49 opens as Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executrix of a former lovers estate. The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse her. But gradually, death, drugs, madness and marriage combine to leave Oepida in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting The Crying of Lot 49.

Engineered like a rocket Ned Beauman, IndependentThe best book to start with Guardian