'A wise, winning and utterly charming concoction of fiction, commentary and autobiography' Literary Review
Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922 and studied biochemistry at Cornell University. An army intelligence scout during the Second World War, he was captured by the Germans and witnessed the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers, an experience which inspired his classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five. After the war he worked as a police reporter, an advertising copywriter and a public relations man for General Electric. His first novel Player Piano (1952) achieved underground success. Cat's Cradle (1963) was hailed by Graham Greene as 'one of the best novels of the year by one of the ablest living authors'. His eighth book, Slaughterhouse-Five was published in 1969 and was a literary and commercial success, and was made into a film in 1972. Vonnegut is the author of thirteen other novels, three collections of stories and five non-fiction books. Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007.
Utterly original...capable of moving from irony to lament within a
sentence
*Guardian*
Reading Timequake... I feel privileged to have spent several hours
in the company of a most genial, affable and upbeat soul indeed...a
wise, winning and utterly charming concoction of fiction,
commentary and autobiography
*Literary Review*
Timequake is sweet, wild and cock-eyed... Vonnegut has always had a
true comic ear... A beautifully fastidious writer, utterly
original
*Guardian*
Fascinating digressions, epigrams and memories, vitalised by
Vonnegut's irrepressible intelligence and comic imagination,
creating a movingly intimate work
*Harper's Bazaar*
Highly entertaining... The portraits of Vonnegut's first wife,
brother and sister are beautiful, sharp, critical, loving
*New York Times Book Review*
Its publisher calls this Vonnegut's "first full-length work of fiction in seven years" (since the novel Hocus Pocus), which seems like a polite way to avoid claiming it as a novel. It's certainly not that, nor is it, strictly speaking, a collection of stories. It is, rather, a good-natured and delightful ramble around the problem of not being able to get a book to work. Using his science-fictional alter ego Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut talks about a recalcitrant book of Trout's whose premise would have been that "a sudden glitch in the space-time continuum'' occurs, creating a 10-year hitch in time in which everyone is forced to live that period of their lives over again, every word and action exactly repeated, from 1991 until 2001, at which point their lives move forward once more. It is a nice conceit, and Vonnegut and Trout have some fun with it, all interwoven with anecdotes about the Vonnegut family, how it feels to be an aging author and suchlike. There are plenty of Vonnegut gems for the taking (he and William Styron agree at one point that only 17% of people in the world have lives worth living), but the effect of the book is more like a relaxed, jokey conversation than anything else. Call it a patchwork of brief, semi-fictional essays; no matter, Vonnegut is always good company. (Sept.)
Utterly original...capable of moving from irony to lament within a
sentence * Guardian *
Reading Timequake... I feel privileged to have spent several
hours in the company of a most genial, affable and upbeat soul
indeed...a wise, winning and utterly charming concoction of
fiction, commentary and autobiography * Literary Review *
Timequake is sweet, wild and cock-eyed... Vonnegut has
always had a true comic ear... A beautifully fastidious writer,
utterly original * Guardian *
Fascinating digressions, epigrams and memories, vitalised by
Vonnegut's irrepressible intelligence and comic imagination,
creating a movingly intimate work * Harper's Bazaar *
Highly entertaining... The portraits of Vonnegut's first wife,
brother and sister are beautiful, sharp, critical, loving * New
York Times Book Review *
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