An accessible paperback edition of a popular classic is a satirical social analysis that follows the haphazard life experiences of a man who is abducted by aliens and rendered a prisoner of war during the 1945 bombing of Dresden. Reissue 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 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 POW. 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.Praise for Slaughterhouse-FivePoignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement.-The Boston GlobeVery tough and very funny . . . sad and delightful . . . very Vonnegut.-New York TimesSplendid . . . a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears.-Life Funny, satirical, compelling, outrageous, fanciful, mordant, fecund . . . 'It's too good to be science fiction,' [the critics] would say. But Vonnegut doesn't care, and you won't care, either, because this is a writer who leaps over genres.-Los Angeles Times