Jailbird

Description

Jailbird is Vonnegut's riotous urban fairytale about the various fiascos of the Nixon years J'ailbird has the crackle and snap of Vonnegut's early work - his best since Cat's Cradle. Using the laid-back, ironic voice that has become his stademark, Vonnegut combines fiction and fact to construct an ingenious, wry morality play' - Newsweek Vonnegut's riotous urban fairytale about the various fiascos of the Nixon years - a firm fan favourite Walter J. Starbuck's life was on the up. With a Harvard education, a job in federal government and then in Nixon's White House, everything was going great. Only things took a truly spectacular turn for the worse when his involvement in the Watergate scandal landed him in jail. Now, as the brave new world of the 1980s dawns, Starbuck is finally free and on his way back into the world. This is the story of the first twenty-four hours after his release, told with Kurt Vonnegut's razor-sharp wit and satirical bite.

Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922 and studied biochemistry at Cornell University. An army intelligence scout during the Second World War, he was captured by the Germans and witnessed the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers, an experience which inspired his classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five. After the war he worked as a police reporter, an advertising copywriter and a public relations man for General Electric. His first novel Player Piano (1952) achieved underground success. Cat's Cradle (1963) was hailed by Graham Greene as 'one of the best novels of the year by one of the ablest living authors'. His eighth book, Slaughterhouse-Five was published in 1969 and was a literary and commercial success, and was made into a film in 1972. Vonnegut is the author of thirteen other novels, three collections of stories and five non-fiction books. Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007.

As provoking, as amusing and as silver-tongued as anything Vonnegut has written * New Statesman * Jailbird has the crackle and snap of Vonnegut's early work - his best since Cat's Cradle. Using the laid-back, ironic voice that has become his stademark, Vonnegut combines fiction and fact to construct an ingenious, wry morality play * Newsweek * An overtly political novel attacking McCarthyism and Watergate * Daily Telegraph * After Vonnegut, everything else seems a bit tame * Spectator *