Slaughterhouse-Five\, an American classic\ , is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous Wor ld War II firebombing of Dresden\, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vo nnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about wha t he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction\, science fiction\, autobiography\, and satire in an account of th e life of Billy Pilgrim\, a barber's son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had\, Billy experiences the destructio n of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut\, he experiences time travel\, or c oming "unstuck in time."
\nAn instant bestseller\, \;Slaughterho use-Five \;made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature\, a r eputation that only strengthened over time\, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it wa s precisely those elements of Vonnegut's writing--the political edginess\, the genre-bending inventiveness\, the frank violence\, the transgressive wit--that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differentl y at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something abo ut it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer\, John Irving\, Michael Cr ichton\, Tim O'Brien\, Margaret Atwood\, Elizabeth Strout\, David Sedaris\ , Jennifer Egan\, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut 's words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as "the kind of writ er who made people--young people especially--want to write." George Saunde rs has declared Vonnegut to be "the great\, urgent\, passionate American w riter of our century\, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassi onate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves."
\nMore than f ifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War\ , Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment\, PTSD\, and postwar a nxiety feels as relevant\, darkly humorous\, and profoundly affecting as e ver\, an enduring beacon through our own era's uncertainties
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