Slaughterhouse-five
A Duty Dance With Death
by Kurt Vonnegut
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SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, a best-seller when it was first published in 1969, brought Kurt Vonnegut to prominence as a major voice in American fiction. Vonnegut was a POW held in Dresden in 1945 when the city was attacked by American bombers and virtually obliterated, leaving more than 130,000 people dead. He uses that event as the climax of this satirical and horrifying anti-war novel, in which a young man named Billy Pilgrim experiences much of what Vonnegut himself saw during the war. Unlike his creator however, Pilgrim has become "unstuck in time" following his abduction by aliens thus affording him the opportunity to travel freely across time, visiting different periods in his life in an attempt to sort out his complicated history. The book's anti-war stance, one reason for its success with the counterculture of the Vietnam War generation, is based on Vonnegut's premise that the dehumanization of people is to be avoided at all costs, and it is this stance that accounts for the novel's continued popularity.
Editions of Slaughterhouse-five
 |
ISBN |
Binding/Format Paperback |
Publisher Delta |
Date 1999 |
Price $7.00 |
 GOOD CONDITION |
 |
ISBN |
Binding/Format Paperback |
Publisher Dell Pub Co |
Date 1991 |
Price $1.00 |
Used, Good |
Publisher Notes
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE is one of the worlds great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.
Media Reviews
"What I...applaud is the marvelous comic scenes with the British prisoners of war; the control in the war scenes; the understated bitterness with which he handles the American soldiers....When Vonnegut stops preaching and is funny, I take him very seriously."
First Line
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.
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