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  • Published: 1 December 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099529064
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $19.99

While Mortals Sleep




A collection of sixteen previously unpublished stories by the twentieth century master.

While Mortals Sleep is a smart, clear-eyed collection of stories from one of the most original writers in American fiction. Set in trailers, bars and factories, Vonnegut conjures up a world where men and machines, art and artifice, fame and fortune become curiously twisted and characters pit their dreams and fears against a cruel and comically indifferent world.

Written early in his career, and never published before, these tightly plotted stories are infused with Vonnegut's distinctive blend of observation, imagination and scabrous humour.

This collection features an introduction by Dave Eggers.

  • Published: 1 December 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099529064
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $19.99

About the author

Kurt Vonnegut

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.

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Praise for While Mortals Sleep

While these early stories show an author still testing the boundaries of his craft and obsessions, Vonnegut's acute moral sense and knack for compelling prose are very much on display. In the foreword, Dave Eggers calls Vonnegut "a hippie Mark Twain," which perfectly captures an essential truth about this esteemed author

Publisher's Weekly

Vonnegut is masterful at quickly sketching a character who you instantly recognise and immeadiately are willing to follow... no matter the plot, you as the reader know that by the end of the story, you will get somewhere. That Vonnegut will tell you something with candour and clarity

Dave Eggers

Unimitative and inimitable social satirist

Harper's

A laughing prophet of doom

New York Times

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

Jay McInerney

A cool writer, at once throwaway and passionate and very funny

Financial Times