Schlachthof 5 oder Der Kinderkreuzzug

Anti-war book and science fiction, autobiography and American satire - a very sad and heartwarmingly funny book.

A tragicomic kaleidoscope of madness: What does war do to a person? And how can one continue to live with the images and memories? One of the most important anti-war novels in world literature and a masterpiece of American postmodernism - newly translated by Gregor Hens and with a current afterword by Asal Dardan.

Listen up: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time. Thus begins the erratic story of Billy Pilgrim. He drifts through all the phases and episodes that collectively make up a life: As a soldier in the US Army, Billy Pilgrim survives the Battle of the Bulge, is captured by German forces, and witnesses the bombing inferno of Dresden in 1945 in a slaughterhouse. He becomes an optometrist, gets married, survives a plane crash. He ends up in a psychiatric hospital and is exhibited by the inhabitants of the planet Tralfamador in a zoo. Slaughterhouse-Five is a great timeless novel - wildly funny and vivid, laconic and touching at the same time.