A "brilliant and hilarious" novel of the end times in America and one psychiatrist's quest to save mankind, from a New York Times–bestselling author ( Dallas Morning News).The United States seems to be on the brink of catastrophe. From the abandoned cars littering the highways (no one remembers how to fix them) to the endless hours spent on the golf course (now open twenty-four hours for those who can't bother to wait until daylight to putt) to th...

Williston Bibb Barrett is a rather unusual and inquisitive young Southerner with a special gift for cultivating the possibilities of life. He suffers from occasional bouts of amnesia and disconcerting attacks of déjà vu. He clings to certain old-fashioned notions of behavior, and yet he finds himself constantly impelled to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. And he lives with the secret suspicion that the great world catastrophe that everyone fears will happen has already happened.

When Dr. Tom More (of Love in the Ruins) is released on parole from state prison, he returns to Feliciana, Louisiana, the parish where he was born and bred and where he practiced psychiatry before his arrest. Upon arriving, he notices something strange in almost everyone around him: unusual sexual behavior in women patients, a bizarre loss of inhibition, a lack of complexity in speech—even his own wife's extraordinary success at bridge tournaments, during which her mind seems to f...

From the National Book Award–winning author of The Moviegoer: "These essays . . . have a way of quickening the spirit and cleansing the sight" ( The New Republic).Before winning the National Book Award for fiction in 1962, Walker Percy was an established scholar of science, philosophy, and language. Presented here are his strongest essays in those subjects, offering what he called a "theory of man for a new age."Ambitious yet readable,

Will Barrett of Linwood, North Carolina, is a depressed widower with a peculiar tendency to fall down in strange places. Allison, the girl in the greenhouse, has just escaped from a mental institution and is working hard to make a new life for herself. When their paths cross in a most unusual manner, a relationship begins that will help restore two struggling outcasts to new life.What follows is by turns touching and zany, tragic and comic, as Will undertakes his own Pascalian wage...

A winner of the National Book Award, The Moviegoer established Walker Percy as an insightful and grimly humorous storyteller. It is the tale of Binx Bolling, a small-time stockbroker who lives quietly in suburban New Orleans, pursuing an interest in the movies, affairs with his secretaries, and living out his days. But soon he finds himself on a “search” for something more important, some spiritual truth to anchor him.Binx’s life floats casually along until one fateful Mar...

A pair of profound dystopian novels from the "brilliantly breathtaking" New York Times–bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of The Moviegoer ( The New York Times Book Review).Winner of the National Book Award for The Moviegoer, the "dazzlingly gifted" Southern philosophical author Walker Percy wrote two vividly imagined satirical novels of America's future featuring deeply flawed psychiatrist and spiritual seeker To...

Writings on the South, Catholicism, and more from the National Book Award winner: "His nonfiction is always entertaining and enlightening" ( Library Journal).Published just after Walker Percy's death, Signposts in a Strange Land takes readers through the philosophical, religious, and literary ideas of one of the South's most profound and unique thinkers. Each essay is laced with wit and insight into the human condition. From race relations and the...

"A mock self-help book designed not to help but to provoke . . . to inveigle us into thinking about who we are and how we got into this mess." ( Los Angeles Times Book Review).Filled with quizzes, essays, short stories, and diagrams, Lost in the Cosmos is National Book Award–winning author Walker Percy's humorous take on a familiar genre—as well as an invitation to serious contemplation of life's biggest questions.One part parody and two p...

Lancelot Lamar, a disenchanted liberal lawyer, finds himself confined in a mental asylum with memories that don’t seem worth remembering—until a visit from an old friend and classmate gives him the opportunity to recount his journey of dark violence.It began the day he accidentally discovered he was not the father of his youngest daughter. That discovery touched off his obsession to reverse the degeneration of modern America and begin a new age of chivalry and romance. With ever in...

"A modern knight-errant on a quest after evil; grotesque, convincing and chilling." — The New York Times Book ReviewFed up with the excesses of the 1970s, Lancelot Andrews Lamar, a liberal lawyer and distinguished member of the New Orleans gentry, is determined to stop the modern world's ethical collapse. His quest begins with his wife—an actress who he suspects has been cheating on him for years. Though he initially plans only to gather proof of her infide...

Now in one volume, two novels from the National Book Award winner that follow the life of a Southern man searching for love and connection.In The Last Gentleman, Will Barrett has never felt at peace. After moving from his native South to New York City, Will's most meaningful human connections come through the lens of a telescope in Central Park, from which he views the comings and goings of the eccentric Vaught family. But Will's days as a spectator end whe...