Slaughterhouse-Five: Or the Children's Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) - Softcover

9780440180296: Slaughterhouse-Five: Or the Children's Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)
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Billy Pilgrim is the son of an American barber. He serves as a chaplain's assistant in World War II, is captured by the Germans, and he survives the largest massacre in European history the fire bombing of Dresden. After the war Billy makes a great deal of money as an optometrist, and on his wedding night he is kidnapped by a flying saucer from the planet Tralfamadore. So begins a modern classic by a master storyteller.

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Review:
It took Vonnegut more than 20 years to put his Dresden experiences into words. He explained, "there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again." Slaughterhouse Five is a powerful novel incorporating a number of genres. Only those who have fought in wars can say whether it represents the experience well. However, what the novel does do is invite the reader to look at the absurdity of war. Human versus human, hedonist politicians pressing buttons and ordering millions to their deaths all for ideologies many cannot even comprehend. Flicking between the US, 1940's Germany and Tralfamadore, Vonnegut's semi- autobiographical protagonist Billy Pilgrim finds himself very lost. One minute he is being viewed as a specimen in a Tralfamadorian Zoo, the next he is wandering a post-apocalyptic city looking for corpses. Slaughterhouse Five-Or The Children's Crusade A Duty-Dance with Death is a remarkable blend of black humour, irony, the truth and the absurd. The author regards his work a "failure", millions of readers do not. Released the same time bombs were falling on South East Asia, this title caused controversy and awakening. Essential reading for all. So it goes. --Jon Smith
Review:
"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

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  • PublisherDell
  • Publication date1991
  • ISBN 10 0440180295
  • ISBN 13 9780440180296
  • BindingMass Market Paperback
  • Number of pages215
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Kurt Vonneguts 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 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the worlds 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 barbers 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 Vonneguts writingthe political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive witthat 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 OBrien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonneguts words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as the kind of writer who made peopleyoung people especiallywant to write. George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be 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.More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonneguts portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own eras uncertainties. Billy Pilgrim survives capture by the Gemans in World War II, the Dresden bombings, and the struggle for financial success only to be kidnapped in a flying saucer and taken to the planet Tralfamadore. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780440180296

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