num_pages: 138
description: Oedipa Maas arrives home from a party to discover she has been made executrix of a former lover's estate.This sets her on a strange trail of detection which leads to a secret postal system of outcasts called W.A.S.T.E. Bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse Oedipa in her search: Dr Hilarius, the sinister face-pulling psychoanalyst; Metzger, the child actor turned lawyer; and the eminent philatelist, Genghis Cohen, who likes sex with the news on. But gradually death, drugs, madness and marriage combine to rob Oedipa of her companions, and she is left in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting the crying of Lot 49.Pynchon's work has been compared to Joyce, Beckett, Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, and carries the same brand of rich satire, chaotic brilliance and wild humour.
language: English
title: The Crying of Lot 49
titlecomplete: The Crying of Lot 49
characters: Wendell "Mucho" Maas, Oedipa Maas, Stanley Koteks, Pierce Inverarity
genres: Fiction, American, The United States Of America, Mystery, Literature, Classics, Novels, Contemporary, 20th Century, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 84236
places: California, Los Angeles, California
awards: awardedAt: -94665600000
name: Rosenthal Family Foundation Award
publisher: Penguin Books