Novels & stories, 1963-1973
(Book)

"Kurt Vonnegut is an acidly funny Midwestern fabulist whose anger and sorrow at the way things are is equaled only by his love for the best that we can be. This collection of mid-career masterpieces opens with Cat's Cradle (1963), an icy black comedy of the end of the world. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) tells the tale of a fool, his money, and the lawyer who contrives to part them. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is the saga of Bill Pilgrim, who, having come unstuck in time, is doomed to relive continually both the firebombing of Dresden and his abduction by space aliens. And Breakfast of Champions (1973) describes the fateful meeting of a luckless science fiction writer and a sad-hearted Pontiac dealer who disastrously believes that everyone but himself is a robot. Rounded out by three classic short stories, this is the essential Vonnegut, the works that established him as a signature voice of the sixties and a comic writer for the ages."