
The Crying of Lot 49
- 174 pages · about 3 hours
- First published 1966
- 55 editions
Bookshop.org links may earn us a commission. It supports independent bookstores and costs you nothing.
1 About this book
The Crying of Lot 49 is a novel by the American author Thomas Pynchon. It was published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. on April 27, 1966. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, the plot follows Oedipa Maas, a young Californian woman who begins to embrace a conspiracy theory as she possibly unearths a centuries-old feud between two mail distribution companies.
One of these companies, Thurn and Taxis, actually existed; operating from 1806 to 1867, Thurn and Taxis was the first private firm to distribute postal mail. Like most of Pynchon's writing, The Crying of Lot 49 is often described as postmodernist literature. Time magazine included the book in its list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Odysseus (Greek mythology)
- Politics and government
- Married women
- Poetry
- Greek Epic poetry
- Married people
- Fictional Works [Publication Type]
- Women
2 About Thomas Pynchon
3 Similar books
- The Iliad of Homer by Homer
- Call It Sleep by Henry Roth
- Don't Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk
- Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor
- Inferno by Dante Alighieri
- The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
- Ramayana, a Holy Bible of India by Valmiki
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
