**One of *The Atlantic* ’s Great American Novels** **“A puzzle, an intrigue, a literary and historical tour de force.” — *San Francisco Examiner*** ***The Crying of Lot 49* is Thomas Pynchon’s highly original 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.