Blog this item

Slaughterhouse-Five

Or the Children's Crusade : A Duty-Dance With Death (Thorndike Press Large Print Perennial Bestselle…

By Kurt Vonnegut

(470)

| Hardcover | 9780783883700

Like Slaughterhouse-Five?
Join aNobii to see if your friends read it, and discover similar books!

Book Description

General FictionLarge Print EditionBilly Pilgrim is the son of an American barber. He serves as a chaplains 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 Continue

Critics

Easy Writer

There are many types of social fantasts in literature, but the quality common to them all is a suspicion that the accepted customs of human society, if carried to their logical conclusions, would prove to be grotesquely absurd. Thus Swift, who, next ... (read full critics)

nybooks published on Thu, 26 Aug 2010

Bleak House, or Funny No More Share

Kurt Vonnegut is a socialist pacifist with a romantic/tragic view of life forever haunted by the specter of suicide: his mother's in 1944, his own failed attempt in 1984. As such, his view of life and mankind has grown succeedingly more dim over time ... (read full critics)

blogcritics published on Thu, 30 Jan 2003

22 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

Peculiar. Is it a war book, as I read elsewhere? Or rather science-fiction? Or maybe both, and none?
I enjoyed it: charming, deep, and inspired.

Is this helpful?

Ficie said on Sep 19, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

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.

Is this helpful?

Josh Herr said on Dec 30, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

Essentially Kurt!
One of his best!

Is this helpful?

Angel-a said on Jun 11, 2007 | Add your feedback

to read

Tragic and funny at the same time. I was expecting a kind of chronicle of Dresden bombing. Instead I found a collection of war related events, told with a good dose of dark humor and seen through the eyes of the disenchanted Billy Pilgrim.

Is this helpful?

Roberto Pizzicannella said on Apr 13, 2012 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Brilliant! The writing, the story, the ideas and phylosophies, and most of all the structure.
"So it goes".
[This particular edition was probably scanned from another one, and has several misspelled words... a bit annoying but not a problem for the comprehension.]

Is this helpful?

maCmq said on Aug 27, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

A crusade of words, truly telegraphic and schizophrenic, yet with an incredible flow. A constructed reality which reminded me of Hemmingway and Kafka, probably offending all three authors (or at least one). A true work of art. And a great vacation read (should check on The Extraordinary Popular Delu ... (continue)

A crusade of words, truly telegraphic and schizophrenic, yet with an incredible flow. A constructed reality which reminded me of Hemmingway and Kafka, probably offending all three authors (or at least one). A true work of art. And a great vacation read (should check on The Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay).

Is this helpful?

Jw. said on Aug 21, 2011 about the Unbound edition | Add your feedback