Slaughterhouse 5
Kurt Vonnegut
Read Kurt Vonnegut's powerful masterpiece, which is as timely now as when it was first published.
‘An extraordinary success. A book to read and reread. He is a true artist’ New York Times Book Review
Billy Pilgrim – hapless barber's assistant, successful optometrist, alien abductee, senile widower and soldier – has become unstuck in time. Hiding in the basement of a slaughterhouse in Dresden, with the city and its inhabitants burning above him, he finds himself a survivor of one of the most deadly and destructive battles of the Second World War. But when, exactly? How did he get here? And how does he get out?
Travel through time and space on the shoulders of Vonnegut himself. This is a book about war. Listen to what he has to say: it is of the utmost urgency.
‘The great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.’ George Saunders
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About Kurt Vonnegut
Reviews for Slaughterhouse 5
Daily Telegraph
Mr Vonnegut knows a great deal about what is probably the largest massacre in modern history - the fire-bombing of Dresden in 1945. Slaughterhouse Five is a reaction to the event by one of our most gifted and incisive novelists. A work of keen literary artistry
Joseph Heller, author of 'Catch-22' The individuality of Vonnegut's style is a curious yet perfect match for the pain of the emotional content. A humane, human book that always remains a work of art rather than biography, no matter how apparent the author's presence
Kate Atkinson Unique...one of the writers who map our landscapes for us, who give names to the places we know best
Doris Lessing Funny, satirical, compelling, outrageous, fanciful, mordant, fecund and at the bottom-line, simply stoned-out-of-its-mind
Los Angeles Times
There are writers who create a lot of readers, and there are writers who create a lot of writers, and Vonnegut was both
Jonathan Safran Foer Devastating and supremely human
Guardian
Agonising, funny. His eloquent concern transforms something as pedestrian as a war movie seen back to front into a vision which, in its weird way, is as effecting as any short passage ever written against war
Time magazine
Very tough and very funny...sad and delightful...very Vonnegut
New York Times
A most courageous account of the human condition; at the same time a satire so funny it makes one laugh aloud
Evening Standard