Slaughterhouse-Five

A seminal work in literature, Vonnegut's novel reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

Zusatztext Poignant and hilarious! threaded with compassion and! behind everything! the cataract of a thundering moral statement. The Boston Globe Very tough and very funny . . . sad and delightful . . . very Vonnegut. The New York Times Splendid . . . a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh! a sad book without tears. Life Funny! satirical! compelling! outrageous! fanciful! mordant! fecund . . . 'It's too good to be science fiction!' [the critics] would say. But Vonnegut doesn't care! and you won't care! either! because this is a writer who leaps over genres. Los Angeles Times Informationen zum Autor Kurt Vonnegut Klappentext "A desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century."-Time Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Vonnegut describes as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he himself witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines science fiction, autobiography, humor, historical fiction, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber's son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. Billy, like Vonnegut, experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW, and, as with Vonnegut, it is the defining moment of his life. Unlike the author, he also experiences time travel, or coming "unstuck in time." Billy Pilgrim's odyssey reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most. Praise for Slaughterhouse-Five "Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement."-The Boston Globe "Very tough and very funny . . . sad and delightful . . . very Vonnegut."-New York Times "Splendid art . . . a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears."-Life Chapter One All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names. I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967. It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground. I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, and we made friends with a cab driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisoners of war. His name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn't much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes. He sent O'Hare a postcard at Christmastime, and here is what it said: "I wish you and your family also as to your friend Merry Christmas and a happy New Year and I hope that we'll meet again in a world of peace and freedom in the taxi cab if the accident will." I like that very much: "If the accident will." I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it would be easy for me to write about the des...

ldquo;Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement.”—The Boston Globe*

• “Very tough and very funny . . . sad and delightful . . . very Vonnegut.”—The New York Times*

“Splendid . . . a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears.”*—Life

“Funny, satirical, compelling, outrageous, fanciful, mordant, fecund . . .  ‘It’s too good to be science fiction,’ [the critics] would say. But Vonnegut doesn’t care, and you won’t care, either, because this is a writer who leaps over genres.”—Los Angeles Times

Auteur

Kurt Vonnegut

Texte du rabat

"A desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century."-Time

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Vonnegut describes as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he himself witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines science fiction, autobiography, humor, historical fiction, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber's son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. Billy, like Vonnegut, experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW, and, as with Vonnegut, it is the defining moment of his life. Unlike the author, he also experiences time travel, or coming "unstuck in time." Billy Pilgrim's odyssey reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.

Praise for Slaughterhouse-Five

"Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement."-The Boston Globe

"Very tough and very funny . . . sad and delightful . . . very Vonnegut."-New York Times

"Splendid art . . . a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears."-Life

Résumé
Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time).
 
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
 
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.”

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vo…