As a young man and a prisoner of war Kurt Vonnegut witnessed the 1945 Allied fire-bombing of Dresden in Germany which reduced the once proudly beautiful city to rubble and claimed the lives of thousands of its citizens. For many years Vonnegut tried to write about Dresden by the words would not come. When he did write about it he combined his trademark humour unfettered imagination boundless humanity and keen sense of irony to create one of the most powerful anti-war books ever written. Fifty years on from first publication Slaughterhouse Five remains unique in its wild storytelling its powerful delivery of unavoidable truths and its alchemy of love and tragedy. -- from jacket.
