Slaughterhouse 5
Thursday 3 May 2007 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
An examination of the cultural legacy of Slaughterhouse 5, the best-known novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut, who died in April. The book uses innovative literary tricks with time travel but focuses largely on its protagonist's experience of the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden during World War II. On publication in 1969, it was seen both as science fiction and as a political trigger to re-evaluating the carpet bombing of German cities.
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
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Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse 5 was one of the definitive books of the Sixties.
It revelled in its cultural promiscuity, twisted the novel into a brand new shape and tickled its audience pink. Its author, Kurt Vonnegut, died last month and tomorrow evening he and his book are celebrated in a Night Waves Landmark.
Join Matthew Sweet, the writers, Michael Moorcock and Scarlett Thomas, the historian, Frederick Taylor and the critics, Christopher Bigsby and Jerome Klinkowitz as they set out to explore in no particular order - Dresden, Tralfamadore and the post Vonnegutian galaxy.
That's Night Waves with Matthew Sweet on BBC Radio 3 at nine forty five tonight.
