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 Mardi Gras week, when a bizarre series of events leads him to his unlikely salvation. In his half-brother Lonnie, who is confined to a wheelchair and soon to die, and his stepcousin Kate, whose predicament is even more ominous, Binx begins to find the sort of “certified reality” that had eluded him everywhere but at the movies.

WALKER PERCY went to medical school and interned at Bellevue, intending to be a psychiatrist. After a bout with tuberculosis, he married and converted to Catholicism. He became a writer and his first novel, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award and has never been out of print since its publication. He lived with his wife in Covington, Louisiana, where they operated a bookstore until his death in 1990.