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  • Still ruminating over this one... Kurt Vonnegut tells us that this is an anti-war novel, but it's not what you would expect. No preaching, no anguish, no weeping, no angry disavowals of war. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, gets unstuck in time and pilgrims through time and space. War as a defined ... Continue

    Still ruminating over this one... Kurt Vonnegut tells us that this is an anti-war novel, but it's not what you would expect. No preaching, no anguish, no weeping, no angry disavowals of war. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, gets unstuck in time and pilgrims through time and space. War as a defined moment in time slowly comes unravelled as Billy's war experience bleeds into and merges with the rest of his life. The absurdity of the ocean of war spills to the farthest shores where it wettens and is absorbed by the sands normal life, which is itself abnormal.

    Not really a novel to find meaning in, at least not the meaning of allegory. The jumps in chrnology can seem not worth it at the beginning, but read on to the end. It's more about the effect. A difficult but worthwhile book.

    

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• ― Josh Herr said on Dec 29, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • KV actually was one of the survivors of Dresden. I'm not sure if many of the young readers know this. I would also suggest reading "All Is Quiet On The Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque. It is a novel about the trench warfare of WWI--and was banned by Hitler because it painted the Germans in a ... Continue

    KV actually was one of the survivors of Dresden. I'm not sure if many of the young readers know this. I would also suggest reading "All Is Quiet On The Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque. It is a novel about the trench warfare of WWI--and was banned by Hitler because it painted the Germans in a negative light (in his opinion).

    

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• ― darkwalker said on Jan 23, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Very interesting book, I'm glad I read it.

    

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• ― Savedr said on Oct 6, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Life-changing.

    

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• ― Chezmerelda said on Jun 27, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • I know this is supposed to be brilliant but it jumped around too much for me. Also it was just to weird.

    

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• ― Angie (angiebro) said on Jun 6, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • I believe this one sat on the shelf for some time before actually completing it. I believe it was the last Vonnegut book I read.

    

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• ― Batona said on Mar 31, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes 'unstuck in time' after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

Slaughterhouse-Five is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is also as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch-22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it unique poignancy -- and humor.

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