Título: Slaughterhouse-Five (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)
Autor: Kurt Vonnegut
Sinopse: Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time).
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
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.
Contexto da obra
Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “Slaughterhouse-Five (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)”, de Kurt Vonnegut, publicado pela editora Dell, em 1991 e com 215 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.
Editora: Dell
Páginas: 215
Ano: 1991-11-03
Edição: Reissue
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 0440180295
ISBN13: 9780440180296
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Dell revelam um interesse marcante por narrativas que exploram relações humanas complexas e dilemas pessoais em contextos variados, do cotidiano urbano às paisagens históricas e rurais. A experiência de leitura frequentemente combina personagens multifacetados, como mulheres em transição ou protagonistas envolvidos em mistérios e conflitos morais, com um ritmo que alterna entre momentos de tensão e introspecção. O catálogo sugere uma predileção por tramas que mesclam o drama familiar, o suspense e o romance, muitas vezes ambientadas em cenários realistas ou com toques históricos, criando um clima envolvente e emocional. Além disso, há obras que transitam entre o mais narrativo e o mais informativo, abrangendo desde thrillers policiais até histórias de superação pessoal e dramas sociais.
