Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut (b. 1913) is a prolific writer whose most prominent work, The Slaugherhouse-Five (1969), is based on his personal experiences as a prisoner of war trapped in the Allied's bombing of Dresden in World War II. He then wrote many more novels, of which Breakfast of Champions (1973) was the most commercially successful though not as acclaimed by critics.
Vonnegut has described himself as an atheist, and in 1992 won the "Humanist of the Year" award.[1] He attributed his atheism to having studied anthropology, yet he has been often respectful of those with faith, such as observing that "there were no Atheists in foxholes."[2]
Of German descent, Vonnegut was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II in 1944. Taken to Germany as a prisoner of war, Vonnegut was then stuck in an underground meat locker with his fellow prisoners during the firebombing of Dresden on February 13, 1945. 135,000 Germans died in that attack, which was than the number who perished in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Afterwards, Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners were left to dig corpses out of the ruins.
Robert Scholes gave this review of the Slaughterhouse-Five in the New York Times Book Review:[3]
- Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to be Lot's wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain in order to save them. ... Slaughterhouse Five is an extraordinary success. It is a book we need to read, and to reread.
Vonnegut's timing was perfect, as America in 1969 was struggling with the Vietnam War and other issues relevant to the book, such as ecology, consumerism and claims of overpopulation.