Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.

Staff View

Grouped Work ID:

ed4af483-beb7-d03b-c18d-01f9cf90371a

Go To Grouped Work

Needs Update?:

Date Added:

Jan 26, 2015 23:20:11

Date Updated:

May 10, 2022 13:30:20

Last Metadata Check:

Apr 17, 2024 07:10:38

Last Metadata Change:

Apr 15, 2024 01:56:51

Last Availability Check:

Apr 17, 2024 07:10:38

Last Availability Change:

Apr 17, 2024 07:10:38

Last Grouped Work Modification Time:

Apr 18, 2024 03:07:23

OverDrive Product Record

images

cover:
thumbnail:
cover150Wide:
cover300Wide:

formats

otherFormatIdentifiers

mediaType

eBook

primaryCreator

role: Author
name: Kurt Vonnegut

title

Slaughterhouse-Five

dateAdded

2015-01-26T19:37:00Z

contentDetails

sortTitle

SlaughterhouseFive A Novel; 50th anniversary edition

crossRefId

260840

subtitle

A Novel; 50th anniversary edition

id

30226CCD-C6D2-40AA-BF18-B5FBF0051231

starRating

4.1

OverDrive MetaData

interestLevel

isPublicDomain

False

formats

keywords

creators

imprint

The Dial Press

publishDate

2009-08-11T00:00:00-04:00

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

Slaughterhouse-Five

fullDescription

A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time), featuring a new introduction by Kevin Powers, author of the National Book Award finalist The Yellow Birds

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.”
An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was 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 differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, 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 writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.” George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.”
More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.

gradeLevels

popularity