Author

Kurt Vonnegut

1922-2007 · American novelist and satirist, Dresden POW, author of Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle

Short biography: Kurt Vonnegut in Great Lives

About Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922–2007) was born in Indianapolis. He studied at Cornell, enlisted in the U.S. Army, and as a prisoner of war survived the February 1945 Allied firebombing of Dresden while held in an underground slaughterhouse. After the war he worked as a journalist and General Electric publicist before becoming a full-time writer. Player Piano (1952), Cat's Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Breakfast of Champions (1973) made him a major American satirist; he died in New York in 2007.

Notable works

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Cat's Cradle (1963)
Breakfast of Champions (1973)

On this site

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

1969 · Postwar Contemporary · Novel

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, is Kurt Vonnegut's novel about Billy Pilgrim, an American soldier who becomes 'unstuck in time' and experiences his life out of order. The authorial first chapter explains Vonnegut's long struggle to write about Dresden, which he saw as a POW in 1945.

medium medical relevanceWar Violence Death / Mortality Fate / Free Will