Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut in 1965
Born	Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922-11-11)November 11, 1922 Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
Died	April 11, 2007(2007-04-11) (aged 84) New York City, U.S.
Occupation	Author
Education	Cornell University Carnegie Mellon University University of Tennessee University of Chicago (MA)
Genre	Satire gallows humor science fiction
Literary movement	Postmodernism
Years active	1951–2007
Notable works	Slaughterhouse-Five Cat's Cradle
Spouse	Jane Marie Cox ​ ​ (m. 1945; div. 1971)​ Jill Krementz ​ (m. 1979)​
Children	3 biological, including Mark and Edith 4 adopted, including Steve Adams
Signature

Kurt Vonnegut (/ˈvɒnəɡət/ VON-ə-gət; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels.^[1] His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works over fifty-plus years; further works have been published since his death.

Born and raised in Indianapolis, Vonnegut attended Cornell University, but withdrew in January 1943 and enlisted in the U.S. Army. As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in World War II and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden, where he survived the Allied bombing of the city in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, he married Jane Marie Cox. He and his wife both attended the University of Chicago while he worked as a night reporter for the City News Bureau.^[2]

Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. It received positive reviews yet sold poorly. In the nearly 20 years that followed, several well regarded novels were published, including The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Cat's Cradle (1963), both of which were nominated for the Hugo Award for best science fiction or fantasy novel of the year. His short-story collection, Welcome to the Monkey House, was published in 1968.

Vonnegut's breakthrough was his commercially and critically successful sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Its anti-war sentiment resonated with its readers amid the Vietnam War, and its reviews were generally positive. It rose to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list and made Vonnegut famous. Later in his career, Vonnegut published autobiographical essays and short-story collections such as Fates Worse Than Death (1991) and A Man Without a Country (2005). He has been hailed for his darkly humorous commentary on American society. His son Mark published a compilation of his work, Armageddon in Retrospect, in 2008. In 2017, Seven Stories Press published Complete Stories, a collection of Vonnegut's short fiction.