Published: 2 February 2004
ISBN: 9780099470465
Imprint: Vintage Classics
Format: Paperback
Pages: 544
RRP: $22.99

Categories:

War & combat

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

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Boomerang

One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century - a potent satire on the madness of war.

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

'The most devastating satire ever written about the lunacy of war and military bureaucracy' Antony Beevor

INTRODUCED BY HOWARD JACOBSON

Published: 2 February 2004
ISBN: 9780099470465
Imprint: Vintage Classics
Format: Paperback
Pages: 544
RRP: $22.99

Categories:

War & combat

About the author

Joseph Heller

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.

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Praise for Catch-22

It is a rare book in that it has the ability to make you laugh out loud and be deeply moved within a few pages.
Adam Staten, British Journal of General Practice

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

Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny, and fantastically unique. No one has ever written a book like this
Financial Times

An apocalyptic masterpiece
Chicago Times

It is the Rock and Roll of novels
Norman Mailer

Catch-22 is the only war novel I've ever read that makes any sense
Harper Lee

Once you "get it" it is a gripping and devastating insight into the pointlessness and bureaucracy of war and its consequences
The Times

The most devastating satire ever written about the lunacy of war and military bureaucracy
Antony Beevor

Wildly original, brutally gruesome, a dazzling performance that will outrage as many readers as it delights. Vulgarly, bitterly, savagely funny, it will not be forgotten by those who can take it
New York Times

Not only the best novel to come out of the war but the best novel to come out of anywhere in years
The Nation

Mournful and joyful...it is masterful
Books Quarterly

The greatest satirical work in the English language since EREHWON
Observer