Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Kurt Vonnegut.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., (born Nov. 11, 1922, Indianapolis, Ind., U.S.—died April 11, 2007, New York, N.Y.), U.S. novelist. He attended Cornell University and the University of Chicago. Captured by the Germans during World War II, he also survived the Allied firebombing of Dresden, an experience he made part of his novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969; film, 1972). His pessimistic and satirical novels use fantasy and science fiction to highlight the horrors and ironies of 20th-century civilization. They include Player Piano (1952), Cat’s Cradle (1963), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Galápagos (1985), and Timequake (1997). A Man Without a Country (2005) is a collection of essays and speeches. Vonnegut also wrote plays and short stories.

Analyze short fiction elements evidenced in “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Necklace,” and “The Magic Shop”

short story Summary

Short story, brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and that usually deals with only a few characters. The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise

science fiction Summary

Science fiction, a form of fiction that deals principally with the impact of actual or imagined science upon society or individuals. The term science fiction was popularized, if not invented, in the 1920s by one of the genre’s principal advocates, the American publisher Hugo Gernsback. The Hugo

novel Summary

Novel, an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting. Within its broad framework, the genre of the novel has encompassed an