The Confidence Man: His Masquerade

The Confidence Man is a satirical novel set aboard a Mississippi steamboat on April Fools' Day. A mysterious stranger, who appears in a series of different guises, meets the passengers one after another and asks for trust, money or belief in various causes.

Much of the book is made of conversations, in which questions of honesty, charity, optimism and human gullibility are tested. Strange, witty and ambiguous, it was little understood in Melville's lifetime and is now admired as a forerunner of modern fiction.