Page 12 - Digital Cornice Grade 10

Title: Slaughterhouse-Five

Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher: Delacorte

Genre: Dark comedy, Satire, Science fiction,

War novel,

Metafiction, Postmodernism

First Publication: March 31, 1969

Language: English

Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” is a read that
is engaging, thought-provoking and ‘un-putdown

able’, for it is a poignant anti-war novel that has

elements of science fiction, including 4th-dimensional
time travel and aliens, that keeps you perplexed

throughout. It’s a nonlinear story that follows a man

named Billy Pilgrim as he travels through different
moments in his life, weaving back and forth through

distinct time periods.

This perfectly crafted novel starts off with Billy Pilgrim’s experiences during World War II,

including his capture by the Germans and subsequent imprisonment, in a somewhat
chronological manner. Mixed in with the war story are the events that occur in Billy’s life,

both before and after the war; many of them are told as Billy time travels to the past and

to the future. It is learned that Billy lives a somewhat ordinary life in Ilium, New York.