Slaughterhouse Five

Book Details

35.7% complete

Author(s):

Kurt Vonnegut Jr

First Pub:

1968

Genre(s):

Fiction; Science Fiction

Word Count:

49,459

First Read:

1985

Times Read:

1 time

Rating:

Internal ID:

319

Series:

No series

Copyright:

First Sentence:

None on file

Last Sentence:

None on file

Comments:

No comments on file

Extract (may contain spoilers)

The parade pranced, staggered and reeled to the gate of the Dresden slaughterhouse, and then it went inside. The slaughterhouse wasn't a busy place any more. Almost all the hooved animals in Germany had been killed and eaten and excreted by human beings, mostly soldiers. So it goes.
The Americans were taken to the fifth building inside the gate. It was a one-story cement-block cube with sliding doors in front and back. It had been built as a shelter for pigs about to be butchered. Now it was going to be served as a home away from home for one hundred American prisoners of war. There were bunks in there, and two potbellied stoves and a water tap. Behind it was a latrine, which was a one-rail fence with buckets under it.
There was a big number over the door of the building. The number was five. Before the American could go inside, their only English-speaking guard told them to memorize their simple address, in case they got lost in the big city. Their address was this: "Schlachthof-fünf." Schlachthof meant slaughterhouse. Fünf was good old five.

Added: 29-Dec-2002

Last Updated: 16-Sep-2024

01-Oct-1971

Dell Publishing Company

Date Issued:

Cir 01-Oct-1971

Pages*:

215

Read:

Once

Cover Link(s):

amazon.com

Internal ID:

232

Publisher:

Dell Publishing Company

ISBN:

0-440-18029-5

ISBN-13:

978-0-440-18029-6

Printing:

Country:

United States

Language:

English

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE
"KURT VONNEGUT, JR. HAS WRITTEN ONE OF THE MAJOR NOVELS OF THE YEAR... HAUNTING... IRRESISTIBLE READING... POIGNANT AND HILARIOUS, THREADED WITH COMPASSION AND, BEHIND EVERYTHING, THE CATARACT OF A THUNDERING MORAL STATEMENT... WORK OF ART."
Boston Globe

"SPLENDID ART AND SIMPLICITY... NERVE-RACKING CONTROL... A FUNNY BOOK AT WHICH YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LAUGH, A SAD BOOK WITHOUT TEARS, A TALE TOLD IN A SLAUGHTERHOUSE."
Life Magazine

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
With Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., took center stage as one of America's most important writers, and went on to produce such best sellers as Breakfast of Champions, Deadeye Dick, and Galápagos.

Cover:

Notes and Comments:

01-Dec-1991

Dell Publishing Company

Date Issued:

Cir 01-Dec-1991

Pages*:

215

Cover Link(s):

amazon.com

Internal ID:

233

Publisher:

Dell Publishing Company

ISBN:

0-440-18029-5

ISBN-13:

978-0-440-18029-6

Country:

United States

Language:

English

"VONNEGUT IS GEORGE ORWELL, DR. CALIGARI AND FLASH GORDON COMPOUNDED INTO ONE WRITER... A ZANY BUT MORAL MAD SCIENTIST." - Time

KURT VONNEGUT
is a master of contemporary American literature. He is the author of eighteen highly acclaimed books and dozens of short stories and essays. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him as "a true artist"^* with Cat's Cradle in 1963. He is, as Graham Greene has declared, "one of the best living American writers."

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE
is one of the world's great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous firebombing 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.

"SPLENDID ART... A FUNNY BOOK AT WHICH YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LAUGH. A SAD BOOK WITHOUT TEARS."
- William Sheed, Life

"VERY TOUGH AND VERY FUNNY... SAD AND DELIGHTFUL... VERY VONNEGUT."
- The New York Times

^* The New York Times

Cover:

Notes and Comments:

01-Oct-1971
Dell Publishing Company

01-Dec-1991
Dell Publishing Company

Author(s)

Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Birth: 11 Nov 1922 Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Death: 11 Apr 2007 New York, New York, USA

Notes:

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He attended high school at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis at which he had his first experience in writing. He was a writer and editor for the Shortridge Daily Echo, the first high school daily newspaper in the country.

After graduating in 1940, Vonnegut went Cornell University. Vonnegut began his college career as a chemistry and biology major. His older brother Bernard would later discover cloud seeding. Vonnegut excelled as a columnist and editor for the Cornell Daily Sun when. In 1943 when he was about to be asked to leave Cornell because of poor grades, he enlisting in the army.

On May 14, 1944, Kurt Vonnegut's mother committed suicide. His father became a hermit content to be in his own little world. He died on October 1, 1957.

Vonnegut became a prisoner of war in Germany on December 14, 1944, after being captured in the Battle of the Bulge. He was sent to Dresden, an city that produced nothing war related and was supposedly off-limits to allied bombing. On February 13, 1945 allied forces bombed Dresden and killed around 135,000 civilians. Vonnegut and other POW's were able to survive by waiting in the cellars of their quarters.

On September 1, 1945, Vonnegut married Jane Cox. He spent the next two years at the University of Chicago as a graduate student. He worked for the Chicago City News Bureau while there. His master's thesis was rejected and he moved to New York. There he worked as a publicist for General Electric. On February 11, 1950, Vonnegut's published his first short story, "Report on the Barnhouse Effect." And soon after he was able to quit his job and move his family to Massachusetts.

He published his first novel in 1952 entitled Player Piano. By 1959, his 41-year-old sister died from cancer just hours after her husband had died in a train accident. Vonnegut adopted three of Alice's four children.

Vonnegut published his sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, in 1968 detailing his time in Dresden from the viewpoint of Billy Pilgrim.

He published Breakfast of Champions in 1973 and Slapstick 1976, which was followed by Jailbird in 1979.

He was severely injured in a fire on January 30, 2000 in New York City.

Awards

1970	Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America	Nebula Award - Best Novel	Nominee
1970	World Science Fiction Society	Hugo Award - Best Novel	Nominee

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