Catch-22: As recommended on BBC2's Between the Covers

Description

Soon to be a major TV series on Channel 4 and Hulu, starring George Clooney and Hugh Laurie **AS SEEN ON BBC TWO'S BETWEEN THE COVERS** Discover Joseph Heller's hilarious and tragic satire on military madness, and the tale of one man's efforts to survive it. It's the closing months of World War II and Yossarian has never been closer to death. Stationed in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, each flight mission introduces him to thousands of people determined to kill him. But the enemy above is not Yossarian's problem - it is his own army intent on keeping him airborne, and the maddening 'Catch-22' that allows for no possibility of escape. 'The greatest satirical work in the English language' Observer

Joseph Heller (Author) Joseph Heller was born in 1923 in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a bombardier in the Second World War and then attended New York University and Columbia University and then Oxford, the last on a Fullbright scholarship. He then taught for two years at Pennsylvania State University, before returning to New York, where he began a successful career in the advertising departments of Time, Look and McCall's magazines. It was during this time that he had the idea for Catch-22. Working on the novel in spare moments and evenings at home, it took him eight years to complete and was first published in 1961. His second novel, Something Happened was published in 1974, Good As Gold in 1979 and Closing Time in 1994. He is also the author of the play We Bombed in New Haven. Howard Jacobson (Introducer) Howard Jacobson has written sixteen novels and five works of non-fiction. He won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question; he was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for J.

Wildly original, brutally gruesome, a dazzling performance that will outrage as many readers as it delights. Vulgarly, bitterly funny, it will not be forgotten by those who can take it * New York Times * Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny and fantastically unique. No one has ever written a book like this * Financial Times * The greatest satirical work in the English language * Philip Toynbee, Observer * Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny, and fantastically unique. No one has ever written a book like this * Financial Times * An apocalyptic masterpiece * Chicago Times *