Breakfast of Champions: Discover this iconic novel from the brilliant space-wanderer Kurt Vonnegut - rejacketed in a new, witty series style. - Softcover

Vonnegut, Kurt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099842602 ISBN 13: 9780099842606

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 1992

Synopsis

Discover Vonnegurt’s funny absurdist novel about the human condition.

‘Outrageous, witty, thought-provoking, unputdownable, scintillating, invigorating, ennobling, enlightening and masterly’ Spectator

In a frolic of cartoon and comic outbursts against rule and reason, a miraculous weaving of science fiction, memoir, parable, fairy tale and farce, Kurt Vonnegut attacks the whole spectrum of American society, releasing some of his best-loved literary creations on the scene.

‘Vonnegut explains everything from an apple to the pyramids…weird, fast and inventive’ Daily Telegraph

About this title

Review

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane." So reads the tombstone of downtrodden writer Kilgore Trout, but we have no doubt who's really talking: his alter ego Kurt Vonnegut. Health versus sickness, humanity versus inhumanity--both sets of ideas bounce through this challenging and funny book. As with the rest of Vonnegut's pure fantasy, it lacks the shimmering, fact-fueled rage that illuminates Slaughterhouse-Five. At the same time, that makes this book perhaps more enjoyable to read.

Breakfast of Champions is a slippery, lucid, bleakly humorous jaunt through (sick? inhumane?) America circa 1973, with Vonnegut acting as our Virgil-like companion. The book follows its main character, auto-dealing solid-citizen Dwayne Hoover, down into madness, a condition brought on by the work of the aforementioned Kilgore Trout. As Dwayne cracks, then crumbles, Breakfast of Champions coolly shows the effects his dementia has on the web of characters surrounding him. It's not much of a plot, but it's enough for Vonnegut to air unique opinions on America, sex, war, love, and all of his other pet topics--you know, the only ones that really count.

From the Publisher

Breakfast Of Champions is vintage Vonnegut. One of his favorite characters, aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. The result is murderously funny satire as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099842602
• ISBN 13: 9780099842606
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320