The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49 is Thomas Pynchon's classic satire of modern America, about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in what would appear to be an international conspiracy.
When her ex-lover, wealthy real-estate tycoon Pierce Inverarity, dies and designates her the coexecutor of his estate, California housewife Oedipa Maas is thrust into a paranoid mystery of metaphors, symbols, and the United States Postal Service. Traveling across Southern California, she meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge.

“A puzzle, an intrigue, a literary and historical tour de force.” — San Francisco Examiner
“The comedy crackles, the puns pop, the satire explodes.” — New York Times
"Mr. Pynchon's satirical eye doesn't miss a thing, including rock n' roll singers right wing extremists, and the general subculture of Southern California." — Library Journal
“[A] spectacular tale. . . . The work of a virtuoso with prose. . . . His intricate symbolic order is akin to that of Joyce's Ulysses."  — Chicago Tribune
“Pynchon is again whispering something in our ear about the meaning of coincidence, the possibility of recurrence in history, and the circularity of time. . . . . The Crying of Lot 49 is one of those mystery novels that can’t be solved.”  — New York Review of Books
“Remarkable. . . . The Crying of Lot 49 resembles metaphysical poetry in the range of its allusions and the curiosity of its creator. Consequently, the book is always surprising.”  — Washington Post