Sign-In
Cart
The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
Paperback
Series: Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels
Mystery & ThrillerScience FictionGeneral Fiction
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN10: 0486817512
ISBN13: 9780486817514
Publisher: Dover Pubn Inc
Published: Nov 15 2017
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.70 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
ISBN13: 9780486817514
Publisher: Dover Pubn Inc
Published: Nov 15 2017
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.70 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
On April Fool's Day in 1856, a shape-shifting grifter boards a Mississippi riverboat to expose the pretenses, hypocrisies, and self-delusions of his fellow passengers. The con artist assumes numerous identities -- a disabled beggar, a charity fundraiser, a successful businessman, an urbane gentleman -- to win over his not-entirely-innocent dupes. The central character's shifting identities, as fluid as the river itself, reflect broader aspects of human identity even as his impudent hoaxes form a meditation on illusion and trust.
This comic allegory addresses themes of sincerity, character, and morality in its challenge to the optimism and materialism of mid-19th-century America. By the time of its publication, readers had pigeonholed Herman Melville as a writer of adventure yarns. The novel was completely misunderstood by the author's contemporaries, and its financial failure drove him away from fiction. With the passage of time, however, The Confidence-Man has come to be recognized for its stunningly modern techniques and its indictment of the dark side of the American dream.
20 different editions
Also available
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
$38.00
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
From $14.99
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
From $17.99
John Updike: Novels 1978-1984 (Loa #339): The Coup / Rabbit Is Rich / The Witches of Eastwick
Updike, John
Hardcover
$42.75
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Musil, Robert
Agee, Joel
Paperback
$79.43
Before Gatsby: The First Twenty-Six Stories
Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Baughman, Judith
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paperback
$50.74