Slaughterhouse 5

Marvellous...the writing is pungent, the antics uproarious, the humour suitably black, the wit sharp as a hypodermic

Daily Telegraph

Mr Vonnegut knows a great deal about what is probably the largest massacre in modern history - the fire-bombing of Dresden in 1945. Slaughterhouse Five is a reaction to the event by one of our most gifted and incisive novelists. A work of keen literary artistry

Joseph Heller, author of 'Catch-22'

The individuality of Vonnegut's style is a curious yet perfect match for the pain of the emotional content. A humane, human book that always remains a work of art rather than biography, no matter how apparent the author's presence

Kate Atkinson

Unique...one of the writers who map our landscapes for us, who give names to the places we know best

Doris Lessing

Devastating and supremely human

Guardian

Agonising, funny. His eloquent concern transforms something as pedestrian as a war movie seen back to front into a vision which, in its weird way, is as effecting as any short passage ever written against war

Time magazine

Very tough and very funny...sad and delightful...very Vonnegut

New York Times

A most courageous account of the human condition; at the same time a satire so funny it makes one laugh aloud

Evening Standard

Funny, satirical, compelling, outrageous, fanciful, mordant, fecund and at the bottom-line, simply stoned-out-of-its-mind

Los Angeles Times

Splendid... A Funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears

Life

There are writers who create a lot of readers, and there are writers who create a lot of writers, and Vonnegut was both

Jonathan Safran Foer

Extraordinary… A remarkably nice and clever book… Billy is clearly something of a stand-in for his creator, a means of talking to the point about the horror in Dresden, a hushed-up massacre worse than Hiroshima. The author intervenes frequently enough throughout his tale to establish that: his private pain keeps thumbing up from the page

Observer

A rare accomplishment... it is a graceful, ferociously humorous, sarcastic and ultimately compassionate parable about man's power for evil and his capacity for grace

Sunday Times