Vonnegut, Kurt Matadero Cinco: La Cruzada de Los Niños / Slaughterhouse-Five (8418187921)
Kurt Vonnegut quer a escribir una novela sobre la guerra. Pero ten a dos problemas. El primero, que le hac a volver a lo que l hab a sufrido: sobrevivi al bombardeo de Dresde, el m s cruento de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y fue hecho prisionero de guerra. El segundo, que le daba pavor que llevasen la historia al cine (como le advirti que pasar a una buena amiga suya) y la interpretase una gran estrella, un actor muy machote, y los ni os quisiesen ir tambi n a la guerra y las guerras no se acabaran nunca.
Pero escribi esa novela, y se prometi que ser a distinta a todas las dem s. Que hablar a de «la cruzada de los ni os . Y que en ella habr a miedo y risa y viajes en el tiempo y ternura y estupor y sorpresa y fragilidad.
Y esa novela se convirti en la gran novela antib lica de todos los tiempos. En el emblema de la contracultura de los sesenta. En uno de los mayores cl sicos de la narrativa estadounidense. En este libro que ahora sostiene el lector, en el que late el coraz n asustado y risue o de Vonnegut dentro de un b nker bombardeado y tambi n la promesa infantil (y bonita) de que no habr m s guerras.
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber's son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming 'unstuck in time.'
An instant bestseller,
Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut's writing--the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit--that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O'Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut's words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as 'the kind of writer who made people--young people especially--want to write.' George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be 'the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.'
Fifty years after its initial publicati