Marvellous...the writing is pungent, the antics uproarious, the wit as sharp as a hypodermic needle

A laughing prophet of doom

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

I came to this book later in life. I think it is, among other things, the loveliest, most delicate account of post-traumatic stress I've ever read — like the water that simply runs from the eyes of Billy Pilgrim.

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

An extraordinary success. A book to read and reread. He is a true artist

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

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

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

Brilliant...this war story is expertly entertaining: various modes of popular heroics are parodied, pitiful instances of human folly stripped and displayed tragi-comically... Dense with reverberant cross-references and juxtapositions

The oddest and most directly and obliquely heart-searching war book for years...Devastating and supremely human

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

Vonnegut uses fantasy to show reality in a new light... enormously funny

Extraordinary...Somehow the elements of comedy, insanity and horror push each other into the right perspective...the scrambling of the time sequences makes the novel delightfully easy reading without ever blurring the ghastliness or absurdity of what happened. The blending of fantasy and documentation is masterly