Slaughterhouse-Five (25th Anniversary Edition) - Or the Children's Crusade: a Duty-Dance with Death

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 ’s humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America’s attention in  The Sirens of Titan  in 1959 and established him as “a true artist” ( The New York Times ) with  Cat’s Cradle  in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene declared, “one of the best living American writers.” Mr. Vonnegut passed away in April 2007. 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 Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American POW. 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." 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 . . . 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 Leseprobe 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 t...

Product details

• Authors: Kevin Powers, Kurt Vonnegut
• Publisher: Modern Library PRH US
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.02.1994
• EAN: 9780385312080
• ISBN: 978-0-385-31208-0
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 134 mm x 205 mm x 21 mm
• Series: Modern Library 100 Best Novels; Modern Library 100 Best Novels
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature