"Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari, and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer...A zany but moral mad scientist." - Time; "Vonnegut is our strongest writer...the most stubbornly Imaginative." - John Irving; "Vonnegut devotees will love this book, and I'm sure anyone else with a sense of humour" - The Providence Sunday Journal
Born in 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana,
KURT VONNEGUT was one of the few grandmasters of modern American letters. Called by the
New York Times "the counterculture's novelist," his works guided a generation through the miasma of war and greed that was life in the U.S. in second half of the 20th century. After a stints as a soldier, anthropology PhD candidate, technical writer for General Electric, and salesman at a Saab dealership, Vonnegut rose to prominence with the publication of
Cat's Cradle in 1963. Several modern classics, including
Slaughterhouse-Five, soon followed. Never quite embraced by the stodgier arbiters of literary taste, Vonnegut was nonetheless beloved by millions of readers throughout the world. "Given who and what I am," he once said, "it has been presumptuous of me to write so well." Kurt Vonnegut died in New York in 2007.
From the eBook edition.