Slaughterhouse 5 (2003)

By Kurt Vonnegut
I think I’ll find it difficult to say anything meaningful about this book because although it’s written in an amusing style it is about terrible things – the experiences of members of the American army during the fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War. Vonnegut himself was in Dresden at this time, as he says in the first chapter, but writes the story through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain’s assistant who became a successful optometrist after returning from the War but who also became “unstuck in time” – he may be in Dresden during the war one minute, and then 40 years ahead in his life the next, writing letters to the local paper about the planet Tralfamadore and how he was kidnapped by its inhabitants and kept in an intergalactic zoo for over 6 months. It manages to be both light and tragic simultaneously. Hmm I’m not sure what to say next, only that I thought this book was excellent and I will be reading more of Kurt Vonnegut soon. Although it has some science fiction overtones, it is primarily a book about how horrible people are to each other, so I don’t think despisers of science-fiction should worry.

Rating: 10 out of 10