Onboard the Fidèle, a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick succession he assumes numerous guises - from a legless beggar and a worldly businessman to a collector for charitable causes and a 'cosmopolitan' gentleman, who simply swindles a barber out of the price of a shave. Making very little from his hoaxes, the pleasure of trickery seems an end in itself for this slippery conman. Is he the Devil? Is his chicanery merely intended to expose the mercenary concerns of those around him? Set on April Fool's Day, The Confidence-Man (1857) is an engaging comedy of masquerades, digressions and shifting identity, and a devastating satire on the American dream.
| ISBN: | 9780140445473 |
| Publication date: | 28th February 1991 |
| Author: | Herman Melville, Stephen Matterson |
| Publisher: | Penguin Classics an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 351 pages |
| Series: | Penguin Classics |
| Genres: |
Classic fiction: general and literary |