Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade, A Duty-Dance With Death.

VONNEGUT JR., Kurt.

Item Number: 3317

New York: Delacorte Press, 1969.

First edition of Vonnegut’s masterpiece. Octavo, original blue cloth. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with light toning to the spine. Boldly signed by Kurt Vonnegut on the half-title page. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.

"Slaughterhouse-Five, perhaps Vonnegut's most powerful novel, presents two characters who can see beneath the surface to the tragic realities of human history but make no attempt to bring about change The central event is the destruction of Dresden by bombs and fire storm—a catastrophe that Vonnegut himself witnessed as a prisoner of war" (Vinson, 1414-15). "Kurt Vonnegut knows all the tricks of the writing game. So he has not even tried to describe the bombing. Instead he has written around it in a highly imaginative, often funny, nearly psychedelic story. The story is sandwiched between an autobiographical introduction and epilogue" (The New York Times).