Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut (1969)

Intro - Slaughterhouse-Five is considered a key novel of the modern pacifist movement and a story about the ephimeral value of existence. Its subtitle (The Kids’ Crusade) refers to war itself, in which elderly men decide to wage war by sending “kids”, the youth, to die in their place. This satirical novel was nominated for the two most important awards to science fiction literature. Vonnegut’s semi-autobiographical World War II novel, describing the deaths of many Germans in the bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945), is the semi-serious story of Billy Pilgrim, the average American man. The novel might be seen as a commentary on more contemporary conditions: a lesson on the horrors of war in any age.