This collection of Vonnegut's letters is the autobiography he never wrote — from the letter he posted home upon being freed from a German POW camp, to notes of advice to his children: Don't let anybody tell you that smoking and boozing are bad for you. Here I am fifty-five years old, and I never felt better in my life. Peppered with insights, one-liners and missives to the likes of Norman Mailer, Gunter Grass and Bernard Malamud, Vonnegut is funny, wise and modest. As he himself said: I am an American fad-of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop. Like Vonnegut's books, his letters make you think, they make you outraged and they make you laugh. Written over a sixty-year period, and never published before, these letters are alive with the unique point of view that made Vonnegut one of the most original writers in American fiction.

One of the great American iconoclasts holds forth on politics, war, books and writers, and his personal life in a series of conversations — including his last publishedinterview. During his long career Kurt Vonnegut won international praise for his novels, plays, and essays. In this new anthology of conversations with Vonnegut — which collectsinterviews from throughout his career — we learn much about what drove Vonnegut to write and how he viewed his work at the end. From Kurt Vonnegut's LastInterview Is there another book in you, by chance? No. Look, I'm 84 years old. Writers of fiction have usually done their best work bythe time they're 45. Chess masters are through when they're 35, and so are baseball players. There are plenty of other people writing. Let them do it. So what's theold man's game, then? My country is in ruins. So I'm a fish in a poisoned fishbowl. I'm mostly just heartsick about this. There should have been hope. This shouldhave been a great country. But we are despised all over the world now. I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's why I wrotebooks. When someone reads one of your books, what would you like them to take from the experience? Well, I'd like the guy — or the girl, ofcourse — to put the book down and think, This is the greatest man who ever lived.

«In his second novel, from 1959, Kurt Vonnegut revealed his true gifts as a science fiction writer. «The spareness hits you first,» wrote William Deresiewicz in a 2012 retrospective on Vonnegut. «The first page contains 14 paragraphs, none of them longer than two sentences, some of them as short as five words. It's like he's placing pieces on a game board-so, and so, and so.» Vonnegut gives us the bizarre, entangled lives of Malachi Constant, the richest man in 22nd-century America; Winston Niles Rumfoord, a now-disembodied human who knows everything that has happened or will happen; and a robot from Trafalmadore, millions of years old, who needs a spare part for his flying saucer.»

All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies. Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding fathers of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he is the inventor of Ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three eccentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Will Felix Hoenikker's death wish come true? Will his last, fatal gift to humankind bring about the end that, for all of us, is nigh? Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global apocalypse preys on our deepest fears of witnessing the end and, worse still, surviving it...

«Галапагосы» — роман в некотором роде уникальный для «позднего» Курта Воннегута, поскольку именно в нем писатель, в совершенстве овладевший даром очаровывать и завораживать читателя тонкой и сверкающей иронией повествования, продолжает истории многих героев и «антигероев» своей «ранней» прозы — и делает это со зрелой мудростью настоящего мастера...»

«Рецидивист» — роман, в определенной степени знаковый для «позднего» творчества Курта Воннегута — писателя, чье владение фирменным «сказовым» стилем достигает истинного совершенства. Перед вами — умная, тонкая и блистательная книга, обладающая, помимо всех вышеперечисленных, еще одним достоинством, — здесь Воннегут продолжает историю одного из самых обаятельных героев своей «ранней» прозы.»

The richest and most depraved man on Earth takes a wild space journey to distant worlds, learning about the purpose of human life along the way.

Experiment Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it, Solution Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding fathers of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he is the inventor of ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three eccentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's death-wish comes true when his last, fatal, gift to mankind brings about an end that, for all of us, is nigh.

Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time, a time-traveler. He has seen his birth and death many times. He has seen the biggest massacre in European history, the fire-bombing of Dresden. He has been kidnapped by a flying saucer from the planet Tralfamadore. He has been taken prisoner by the Germans, packed into a boxcar for nine days and sent to an extermination camp for Russian prisoners of war, and from there to Dresden, the open city that would never be bombed. There are hardly any characters in this story, and practically no dramatic confrontations because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of powerful forces. The story is told with black humour and a deep compassion; a lesson about our world that we should never forget.

This is vintage Vonnegut — hilariously funny and razor-sharp as he fixes his gaze on art, politics, himself and the condition of the soul of America today. Written over the last five years in the form of a loose memoir, A Man without a Country is an intimate and tender communication to us all, sometimes despairing, always searching and ultimately wise and compassionate.

When Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy and only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every fifty-nine days and then only for an hour. But at least, as a consolation, he now knows everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will be. He knows, for instance, that his wife is going to Mars to mate with Malachi Constant, the richest man in the world. He also knows that on Titan — one of Saturn's moons — is an alien from the planet Tralfamadore, who has been waiting 200,000 years for a spare part for his grounded spacecraft...

Wilbur Swain and his twin sister, Eliza, are so immensely hideous, helpless and vile in their infancy that their wealthy parents are forced to send them to live on a nearby asteroid. But behind their facade of idiocy, the monstrous pair possess a joint intelligence that could outstrip the most advanced computers...

«A great deal of wit and playfulness... an entire universe of disorder is distilled» Guardian.»

Tarkington College, a small, exclusive college in upstate New York, is turned upside down when ten thousand prisoners from the maximum security prison across Lake Mahiga break out and head for the college.