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Hocus Pocus
  • Published: 6 December 1991
  • ISBN: 9780099877103
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $29.99

Hocus Pocus

Formats & editions
EBook
31 Aug 2011
Paperback
1 Oct 1997
Paperback
6 Dec 1991
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Master of post-modern satire, Kurt Vonnegut patterns trajectories of sex, spite, crime and power in this kaleidoscopic novel

'Although it is set in the near future, Hocus Pocus is the most topical, realistic Vonnegut novel to date, and shows the struggle of an artist a little impatient with allegory and more than a little impatient with his own country' - New York Times Book Review

Some get all the luck – but not Eugene Debs Hartke. Ex-Vietnam vet, ex-college professor, and now a TB-stricken inmate at Tarkington State Reformatory, his life has been warped by one ludicrous farce after another. Here, on scraps of paper pilfered from the prison library, he recounts his own story for posterity, revealing the hypocrisy and injustices of a world that just doesn’t want him to thrive.
  • Published: 6 December 1991
  • ISBN: 9780099877103
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Kurt Vonnegut

Born in 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana, KURT VONNEGUT was one of the few grandmasters of modern American letters. Called by the New York Times “the counterculture’s novelist,” his works guided a generation through the miasma of war and greed that was life in the U.S. in second half of the 20th century. After a stints as a soldier, anthropology PhD candidate, technical writer for General Electric, and salesman at a Saab dealership, Vonnegut rose to prominence with the publication ofCat’s Cradle in 1963. Several modern classics, including Slaughterhouse-Five, soon followed. Never quite embraced by the stodgier arbiters of literary taste, Vonnegut was nonetheless beloved by millions of readers throughout the world. “Given who and what I am,” he once said, “it has been presumptuous of me to write so well.” Kurt Vonnegut died in New York in 2007.
portrait photo of Kurt Vonnegut

Also by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse 5
Cat's Cradle: Popular Penguins
Breakfast of Champions
Player Piano
Slaughterhouse-Five Deluxe Edition
Monkey Business
Slaughterhouse-Five
See all

Praise for Hocus Pocus

After you have read one of Kurt Vonnegut's gleefully pessimistic novels, his words go on colouring your world for a long time afterwards... not to read him would be to miss out on lessons that need to be learned about the age we live in

Sunday Times

It is all done with voice. Vonnegut is a master of the first-person, manic-depressive stand-up

Observer

Although it is set in the near future, Hocus Pocus is the most topical, realistic Vonnegut novel to date, and shows the struggle of an artist a little impatient with allegory and more than a little impatient with his own country

New York Times Book Review

He is a satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion, a cynic who wants to believe

New York Times

Hocus Pocus is, of course, extremely funny. Jokes are told, deadpan and whiplash-sharp; neat, compulsive little anecdotes with stings in the tail jostle one another down the page

Sunday Correspondent

Vonnegut's best novel in years-funny and prophetic...something special

The Nation

One of the best living American writers

Graham Greene

One of the master alchemists of modern American fiction

Sunday Times

Although it is set in the near future, Hocus Pocus is the most topical, realistic Vonnegut novel to date, and shows the struggle of an artist a little impatient with allegory and more than a little impatient with his own country

New York Times Book Review

Hocus Pocus is, of course, extremely funny. Jokes are told, deadpan and whiplash-sharp; neat, compulsive little anecdotes with stings in the tail jostle one another down the page

Sunday Correspondent

Vonnegut's best novel in years-funny and prophetic...something special

The Nation