Kurt Vonnegut, página 2 de 7

Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government...and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentary as Watergate's least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times.

«Esmorzar de campions» és el regal que, en fer cinquanta anys, Kurt Vonnegut es va fer a si mateix: «Aquesta és la història de com dos homes blancs força vells, solitaris i escanyolits es van conèixe

En este libro nada es cierto. Jonás (o John) se propone investigar qué estaban haciendo los norteamericanos más destacados el día en que se arrojó la bomba en Hiroshima. Las cartas que intercambia con el hijo menor del doctor Felix Hoenikker uno de los padres de la bomba atomica lo zambullen en una intriga familiar que oculta la mas terrorifica contribucion de la ciencia a la humanidad...

Manhattan has become the Island of Death. The former President of the United States stands barefoot in a purple toga around a cooking fire in the lobby of the Empire State Building. He is Dr Wilbur Daffodil-II Swain and Slapstick or Lonesome No More! is his story - one of monstrous twins, orgies, revenge, golf, utopian schemes, and very little tooth brushing. In this post-apocalyptic black comedy - dedicated to Laurel and Hardy - Vonnegut is at his most hilarious, grotesque, and personal.

Prisoner of war, optometrist, time-traveller - these are the life roles of Billy Pilgrim, hero of this miraculously moving, bitter and funny story of innocence faced with apocalypse. Slaughterhouse 5 is one of the world's great anti-war books. Centring on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

"Il libro e il racconto in prima persona di un americano trasferitosi con la famiglia in Germania dopo la prima guerra mondiale, che vi resta anche dopo la presa del potere di Hitler e diventa la voce della propaganda nazista di Goebbels per gli Stati Uniti. All'inizio e alla fine del libro il protagonista si trova in una prigione israeliana, in attesa di processo per crimini di guerra, li ripensa alla propria vita e decide di scrivere le sue memorie. Il racconto, presentato come un autentico documento storico, risulta un'attuala riflessione sulla guerra, la violenza e le loro cause. Dal libro, pubblicato nel 1961, e stato tratto anche un film interpretato da Nick Nolte nel 1996. "

Foreword by Dave Eggers Smart, whimsical, and often scathing, the fiction of Kurt Vonnegut influenced a generation of American writers—including Dave Eggers, author of this volume's Foreword. In these previously unpublished gems, Vonnegut's originality infuses a unique landscape of factories, trailers, and bars—and characters who pit their dreams and fears against a cruel and sometimes comically indifferent world. Here are stories of men and machines, art and artifice, and how ideals of fortune, fame, and love take curious twists in ordinary lives. An ambitious builder of roads, commanding an army of bulldozers, graders, and asphalt spreaders, fritters away his free time with miniature trains—until the women in his life crash his fantasy land. Trapped in a stenography pool, a young dreamer receives a call from a robber on the run, who presents her with a strange proposition. A crusty newspaperman is forced onto a committee to judge Christmas displays—a job that leads him to a suspiciously ostentatious ex-con and then a miracle. A hog farmer's widow receives cryptic, unsolicited letters from a man in Schenectady about "the indefinable sweet aches of the spirit." But what will she find when she goes to meet him in the flesh? These beautifully rendered works are a testament to Vonnegut's unique blend of observation and imagination. Like a present left behind by a departed loved one, While Mortals Sleep bestows upon us a shimmering Kurt Vonnegut gift: a poignant reflection of our world as it is and as it could be.

Broad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn. But then a voluptuous young widow badgers Rabo into telling his life story—and Vonnegut in turn tells us the plain, heart-hammering truth about man's careless fancy to create or destroy what he loves.

Salt en el temps. El 13 de febrer del 2001 lunivers deixa dexpandir-se, es contrau i retrocedeix deu anys entrere. Tothom ha de tornar a viure aquests anys, tal com els havia viscut, sense possibilitat de canviar res. Mancats de voluntat propia, els essers humans esdevenen maquines, una idea recurrent en els llibres de Vonnegut. Segons lautor, aquesta es la seva darrera novel·la i repassa, amb un cinisme ferotge, els seus temes preferits: la vanitat i la estupidesa humanes, les guerres absurdes (no hi pot faltar Hitler jugant al bingo), la televisio, el poder economic america... Pero tambe desplega la seva sensibilitat extrema cap als desvalguts i els oprimits.Kurt VonnegutNascut a Indianapolis (Estats Units) lany 1921, va passar per diferents oficis abans de dedicar-se plenament a la literatura. Va sobreviure al bombardeig que va arrasar Dresde a la Segona Guerra Mundial; va traslladar aquesta experiencia a Escorxador 5, la seva novel·la mes celebrada, juntament amb Esmorzar de campions. Sel considera, sense discussio, un mestre de la literatura americana per la capacitat satirica, lhumor negre i una imaginacio sense limits. Va morir l11 dabril del 2007.

From the author of Timequake, this "irresistible" novel (Cleveland Plain Dealer) tells the story of Eugene Debs Hartke-Vietnam veteran, jazz pianist, college professor, and prognosticator of the apocalypse. It's "Vonnegut's best novel in years-funny and prophetic...something special." (The Nation)