As a young man and a prisoner of war, Kurt Vonnegut witnessed the 1945
Allied fire-bombing of Dresden in Germany, which reduced the once proudly
beautiful city to rubble and claimed the lives of thousands of its
citizens. For many years, Vonnegut tried to write about Dresden by the
words would not come. When he did write about it, he combined his trademark
humour, unfettered imagination, boundless humanity and keen sense of irony
to create one of the most powerful anti-war books ever written. Fifty years
on from first publication, Slaughterhouse Five remains unique in its wild
storytelling, its powerful delivery of unavoidable truths, and its alchemy
of love and tragedy. -- from jacket.