Colibri Publishers

The most scandalous American writer of our time, Philip Roth has incessantly shocked and provoked the world with his literary masterpieces more than anybody else of his generation. Quite deservingly he has won some of the most prestigious awards for literature – two times the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize for his “American Pastoral” (1997) and this year’s International Man Booker prize. Oscillating between the shameless descriptions of the sexual life of ordinary men and the uncompromising analysis of American politics and social pathologies, his work stands out as a fabulous mirror for our own quest for identity in a world where the intersection of the private and the public has become more complex than ever.

Irvin David Yalom, M.D., is an author of fiction and nonfiction, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University, an existentialist, and accomplished psychotherapist.

According to The Guardian, Haruki Murakami is “among the world’s greatest living novelists”. By now, the Japanese author has been awarded with the Franz Kafka prize of the Czech Republic and the Jerusalem Prize, given for distinguished impact on the world’s idea of freedom. His novel “Norwegian Wood” (1987) was a mass cult in his native Japan, selling millions of copies and becoming a contemporary myth. “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” (1994/1995) is much more socially-conscious in comparison to his previous works, interested majorly in personal and quite impressionist depictions of solitude and alienation. “Kafka on the Shore” (2002) turned out to be his most critically acclaimed work, legitimately making him one of the indisputable masters of postmodern literature worldwide.

He is the most famous American writer in France, honoured with the French decoration Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, receiving as well the first “Grand Prix du Figaro”, an award given by the popular newspaper “Le Figaro”. His debut novel “Dead Heart” (1994) attracted just about everybody’s attention with its unapologetic language, its shrewd allegoric portrayal of a totalitarian society and his sardonic, yet comprehensive, attitude towards the shortcomings of our devoid of meaning contemporary existence. Yet, it wasn’t until 3 years later that Kennedy came to international acclaim with his second novel “The Big Picture” – a stunning account of happiness’ price.

Frédéric Beigbeder made a brilliant career as a journalist, novelist, literary critic, TV reporter, and a founder of the literary prize “Prix de Flore”. He is a famous Parisian dandy and an addict of clubs and bars like Marc Marronnier – the main character of his first three books: “Mémoire d'un jeune homme dérangé” (“Memoirs of a Deranged Young Man”, 1990), “Vacances dans le coma” (“Holidays in a Coma”, 1994) and “L'amour dure trois ans” (“Love Lasts Three Years”, 1997). Beigbeder was born in 1965, and studied at prestigious colleges. He specialised in political science, marketing, journalism and communications. About ten novels of his have been published so far, including “99 francs” - a relentless satire on the world of publicity. The book has been sold in more than 380 000 copies world-wide. In 2007 the novel was filmed in France.

The 63 years old Ian Russell McEwan has earned the status of one of the greatest British writers since 1945. The 1997 novel “Enduring Love”, investigating the unsettling relationship between a science journalist and an obsessive stalker, made him a pioneer setting the golden standard for the so-called neuronovel. “Atonement” (2001), turned quickly into an Oscar-winning movie, made him a global celebrity. Both commercially and critically acclaimed, Ian McEwan just won the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society, a prize that validates him once again as a contemporary humanist, whose work still challenges the limits of our senses and sensibilities in this forever changing world.

If one is to narrow the list of stream-of-consciousness’ founders of modern literature, one would inevitably highlight a very special woman with a room of her own – Virginia Woolf. A pioneer of feminist literature, a scandalous public figure with a fragile sexuality, a profoundly talented novelist and a tragic figure in her own way, Woolf is an embodiment of the flight for freedom of expression during the darkest years of the past century. Her great novels “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925) and “Orlando” (1928) are a remarkable experiment of capturing and grasping the effervescence of human life, the irreversible passage of time and the futile remains of the day. Committing suicide in 1941, Virginia Woolf took with herself the deep and tender secret of her own life, yet she bequeathed to the world a delicate and sophisticated glimpse at it to be savoured in reverent silence.

Spanish-peruvian writer Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, is regarded as one of the creators (along with such writers as Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Carlos Fuentes) of the new Latin American novel. He is a brilliant writer, seeming to understand human weakness to the core. Vargas Llosa is recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. Upon announcing the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy said it had been given to Vargas Llosa “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat”. Vargas Llosa writes prolifically across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Several, such as “Captain Pantoja and the Special Service” and “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter”, have been adapted as feature films. He is the person who, in 1990, “coined the phrase that circled the globe”, declaring on Mexican television, “Mexico is the perfect dictatorship”, a statement which became an adage during the following decade.

One of the most influential intellectuals in Europe, a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature and the most translated Italian writer at the time of his death, Italo Calvino is absolutely essential for the comprehension of past century. The Cuba-born author has a formal academic education in fine arts and literature, which would greatly affect his later career as a journalist, social activist and literary researcher, forever questioning and provoking the limits of writing and of literature itself. As a member of the experimental French group Oulipo, Calvino wrote one of the cornerstones of 20th century literature – “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” (1979) – a collection of unfinished novels that still remains one of the most genuine explanations in love to the world of literature.

José de Sousa Saramago(1922-2010) is a Nobel-laureate Portuguese writer, playwright and journalist. His works commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor rather than the official story. Some of his works can also be seen as allegories – among them are the novels “Blindness” and “The Elephant’s Journey”, which are published in Bulgaria. Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998. More than two million copies of his books have been sold in Portugal and his work has been translated into 25 languages. He was a founding member of the National Front for the Defence of Culture in Lisbon in 1992. A proponent of libertarian communism, Saramago came into conflict with groups such as the Catholic Church. In 1992, the Portuguese government ordered the removal of “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” from the European Literary Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Disheartened by this political censorship of his novel, Saramago went into exile on a Spanish island where he resided until his death in 2010.

Every year, on the October 3rd the world is given something of a treat, besides the annual prix Goncourt – a new novel by the praised Bernard Werber. Known for his extensive scientific research, elaborate philosophical reflections and omnipresent symbolism, the French author is now synonymous with a very intelligent and intense prose. “The Ants” trilogy, as well as “Les Thanatonautes” trilogy, presents a large, coherent, auto-functioning idea of the world, supported by multiple theories and scientific data, developed in separate encyclopedic paragraphs. Werber mixes together information and fantasy to reinvent and reinvigorate the possibilities of other worlds, to stimulate the creation of other perceptive dimensions and broaden immensely our imagination.

“Borges, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.” This is what J. M. Coetzee, a Nobel Prize winner, said about him. Jorge Luis Borges (1899 – 1986) was an Argentine writer, essayist, and poet born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school and traveled to Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first International Publishers' Prize, the Prix Formentor. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. His work embraces the “chaos that rules the world and the character of unreality in all literature.” His most famous books, “Ficciones” (1944) and “The Aleph” (1949), are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes: dreams, labyrinths, libraries, fictional writers and works, religion, God. His writings have contributed significantly to the genre of magical realism.

“The Unbearable Lightness of Being” has catapulted the Czech writer Milan Kundera to the heights of undisputed global fame, labeling him the greatest novelist of his country for the twentieth century. Even though refusing to be read as a political dissident, the Nobel Prize for Literature contender Kundera is profoundly engaged in the social destiny of Czechoslovakia during the Communist era, nevertheless using philosophy and metaphysics to transcend the immediate and effervescent, in relation to eternity, human condition. Deeply poetic and multi-layered, his oeuvre is considered a never-ending journey through the labyrinth of life’s fundamentals: love, exile, identity, forgiveness, pleasure and sorrow.

While unapologetically playing with the petrifying distortion of the American dream at the end of last century, Bret Easton Ellis has become a living icon for the generation of the 90s worldwide. His twisted ways of mixing comedy and horror, ethics and degradation, luxury and misery, dreams and nightmares, have turned his literary works into some of the touchstones of contemporary pop culture. As self-assured and cocky as a L.A.-born can get, Ellis fiercely vivisects the lifestyle, values and mores of the USA through the astonishing fate of his “American Psycho” protagonist Patrick Bateman – a literary scapegoat for all the avaricious, soulless investment bankers on Wall Street. His other works “Glamorama” (1998) and “Lunar Park” (2005) continue to dig into the abyss of postmodern society and its mindless desire factories. Bret Easton Ellis is definitely one of the most prominent authors of the Generation X, a prophet and a joker, who tells the unedited version of our times with an all-knowing wink and then invites you to enter the void.

A fascinating public figure and Communist activist, receiving the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951, a chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters for 40 years and one of the great lovers of the 20th century, Jorge Amado is considered the greatest Brazilian novelist to date. During the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas his books were publicly burned and he quickly went into exile in Europe, where he defended Communism and human rights in general. After his return to Brazil, he devoted himself entirely to literature, decidedly exploring femininity and sexuality in the Brazilian culture. Jean Paul Sartre called his novel “Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon” (1958) “the best example of a folk novel”. His best-known work of art “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands” (1966) is a global success and the basis for an eponymous movie classic. Jorge Amado’s novels are translated in 45 languages in 55 countries, declaring him one of the few masters of Latin American prose.

John Steinbeck (1902 – 1968) was unarguably one of the best American writers of the 20th century. A winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, he is best known for his novella “Of Mice and Men” (1937) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Grapes of Wrath” (1939), both of which examine the lives of the working class and the migrant worker during the Great Depression. Steinbeck wrote in the naturalist style, portraying people as the center of his stories. His characters and his stories were taken from real life struggles in the first half of the 20th century. His body of work reflects his wide range of interests, including marine biology, jazz, politics, philosophy, history, and myth. Seventeen of his works, including “Cannery Row” and “The Pearl”, went on to become Hollywood films, and Steinbeck himself succeeded as a Hollywood writer, garnering an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing for Alfred Hitchcock's “Lifeboat”, in 1945. Steinbeck is also known as a regionalist, naturalist, mystic, proletarian writer, moved to anger by the brutality of the Depression.

Acknowledged as “America's most popular suspense novelist” and as one of today's most celebrated and successful writers, Dean Ray Koontz has earned the devotion of millions of readers around the world and the praise of critics everywhere for tales of character, mystery, and adventure that strike to the core of what it means to be human. Dean Ray Koontz (born in 1945) is an American author best known for his novels which could be described broadly as suspense thrillers. He frequently incorporates elements of horror, science fiction, mystery, and satire. Several of his books have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List, with ten hardcovers and fourteen paperbacks reaching the number one slot. Early in his career, Koontz wrote under an array of pen names. Among his most popular novels are “What the Night Knows”, “Velocity”, “Your Heart Belongs to Me” and “The Husband”.

He is a Serbian poet and writer who truly succeeded in mystifying the whole world within his magnificent works of art. When it comes to unconventional novel structures and experiments with form, Milorad Pavić is the first name that comes to mind with his meticulously executed and intricately twisted labyrinths of the imagination: his “metanovels”. Some of them take the shape of an encyclopedia, others are crossword puzzles and “Last Love in Constantinople” is a deck of tarot cards. The reader is always invited to determine the beginning and the end of every story, in a vivid interaction with the written text. Milorad Pavić has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The American Paul Auster is known as the most unorthodox and philosophical writer of crime fiction. His work can be best described as a fusion of existential theories, absurdism and criminal plots – his characters are usually people on the verge of society, complete outsiders, who try to start life from zero and reinvent the conditions under which the human situation revolves. The collection of detective stories “The New York Trilogy” brought him to international success, mesmerizing the audience with its fathomless quest for identity and meaning beyond the surface of our well-ordered and sterile modern lives. Paul Auster has been awarded the France Culture Prize for Foreign Literature in 1989 and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991. His postmodern twist of genres and themes has made it possible for the crime fiction to enter the reserved realm of serious literature.

If India was once the pearl in the crown of the ex-British Empire, the Bombay-born Salman Rushdie is a priceless jewel of his own in the realm of the contemporary English literature. Irreverent, fearless and constantly on the hunt for new, forever more enchanting universes to be discovered, the British-Indian writer has so far built, both through his literary opus magnum and through his public engagements, a reputation of a highly praised and highly controversial modern times genius. His second novel “Midnight Children” (1981), a masterful depiction of the metamorphoses in post-colonial India, was immediately spotted by the critics and won the Man Booker prize. Upon the publishing of his “Satanic Verses” (1988), probably the most discussed and scandalous piece of modern prose, atrociously accused of being a blasphemy on the Muslim world, humanity turned over night into a pack of insatiable readers. “Shame” (1983) fuses magic and historical realism, in an almost indiscernible fashion, to create of tortured portrait of Pakistan. In 2007 Salman Rushdie was appointed a Knight Bachelor by Her Majesty Elizabeth II for “services in literature”.

Born in Barcelona in 1952, Quim Monzó has been awarded the National Award for fiction; the City of Barcelona Award for fiction; the Prudenci Bertrana Award for fiction; the El Temps Award for best novel; the Lletra d'Or Prize; the Catalan Writers' Award; the Maria Àngels Anglada; the Trajectòria; he has also been awarded Serra d'Or magazine's prestigious Critics' Award, four times. In 2007 he wrote and read the opening speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Monzó designed a lecture written as if it was a short story. It differed completely from traditional speeches. Together with Cuca Canals, he wrote the dialogues for Bigas Luna's movie “Jamón, jamón”. He has also written the musical satire “El tango de Don Joan”, with Jérome Savary. He is a regular contributor to the “La Vanguardia” newspaper. “The Enormity of the Tragedy”, a brilliant grotesque novel, is regarded by many as Monzó’s greatest work.

Stieg Larsson is the ultimate market phenomenon of the millennium literature – he turned into best-selling author overnight, posthumously. In 2008 he was the most read author in the world after Khaled Hosseini. By the middle of 2010 his “Millennium series” have sold more than 27 million copies in more than 40 countries. The Swedish journalist and writer, born in Skelleftehamn, had a remote lifestyle, living in the province with his grandparents, avidly reading science-fiction. Contrary to his literary inclinations, his breakthrough came with the now officially most famous crime fiction of our time – the “Millennium series”, manuscripts of three completed, yet unpublished, novels in series that he left at the time of his death (2004). A symbol of an unprecedented commercial success and textual brilliance, Stieg Larsson is more than symptomatic for the present Swedish wave of astounding cultural impact.

Amélie Nothomb has already created an annual tradition in the literary world – a much anticipated publishing of a new novel, each year at the same time; it is more than obvious that she has now attracted everybody’s attention. From the pompous premieres of her works in the bookstores of Champs-Elyssees to the pandemic cultural discussions surrounding her work, Amélie Notomb is defined as a contemporary legend. Her complex work of art intertwines cultural analysis, social subjects, and subtle style of writing that mixes together the sophistication of Far East Asia with the rational sobriety of the Western civilization. A brilliant marketing strategist, an enigmatic figure and a much disciplined aesthete, Amélie Nothomb has refocused the public attention towards the beauty of the French-language literature.

A New York Times best-selling author of mystery and crime fiction, the New Jersey-born Harlan Coben has become one of the most devotedly followed writers in the world. His novels “Tell No One”, “Hold Tight” and “The Woods” are an exceptional commercial and critical success worldwide, turning the thriller genre into high literature. He is the single author to have won the Edgar, the Shamus and the Anthony awards for fiction. By now the political science graduate Harlan Coben has gained the reputation of a master of the most intricate and subtle suspense.

The year of 1948 witnessed one of the most impeccable literary debuts in history – that of the 23 years-old New Orleans-born Truman Capote – “Other Voices, Other Rooms”. Ever since that naughty boy with an all-knowing gaze thrown right at the face of New York high-society has been a living legend – a brilliant writer, proclaimed by W. Somerset Maugham “the hope of modern literature”, a professional provocateur, an avid gossip manufacturer, a “midget” with an echoing laughter according to Peggy Guggenheim, “a mid-century Petronius dispersing the most caustic of all social verdicts”. His “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1958) is an icon novella and “In Cold Blood” (1965) is the first non-fiction novel. With his highly distinguished style, with his clever language and uncompromising attitude, Truman Capote is now a classic, a pivotal writer of the 20th century, who has indelibly changed American literature.

“The world’s most widely read Spanish-language author”, Isabel Allende is now synonymous with the spiritual universe of Latin America. A writer who has invested so much fantasy and imagination to narrate and describe the inimitable beauty of a continent that still remains an indecipherable enigma to the Western civilization, she has enchanted a couple of generations of readers. Her debut novel “The House of the Spirits” (1982) is a pivotal literary work, a chronology of one of the most mesmerizing family epics that aesthetically fuses the political, the sentimental and the transcendental. Last year, Isabel Allende was awarded the most prestigious literary prize of Chile, her native country, - Chilean National Prize for Literature. With the 18 published novels translated into more than 30 languages, her talent has marked indelibly the artistic world of the past 30 years.

Katherine Pancol's insights into human psychology, and particularly women, are amazingly accurate and her sense of details often shaded with wry humor. Her gift to lift people's spirits while providing great entertainment has been key to her success, inspiring many women to dare to be themselves while keeping a positive relationship with life itself. Pancol (born 1954) is a Moroccan-born French novelist. While working for “Paris-Match” and “Cosmopolitan”, she is noticed by an intuitive publisher who encourages her to begin writing. Following the success of her first novel “Moi D'abord” (“Me First”) in 1979, Pancol moves to New York City where she spends the next decade pursuing creative writing and screenwriting classes at Columbia University while producing three more novels “La Barbare” in 1981, “Scarlett, si possible” and “Les hommes cruels ne courent pas les rues”. Her novel “The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles”, published in 2006, has been a huge success in France, where it sold more than one million copies and received the Prix de Maison de la Presse, for largest distribution in France. The novel is the beginning of an extremely successful trilogy, published in Bulgaria. Katherine Pancol was also awarded “Best author 2007” by Gorodets Publishing (Moscow).

P. G. Wodehouse is widely regarded as the greatest comic author in 20 century. He wrote more than 70 novels and 200 short stories, creating numerous much-loved characters. Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881- 1975) was born in Guildford, Surrey, England. He was one of the most famous and prolific comic novelists in England. He wrote novels, short stories, lyrics, essays, plays for almost 70 years. His best known character is Bertram Wooster with his butler Jeeves. He also has other well known story cycles - “Uncle Fred”, “Blandings Castle”, “Mr. Mulliner”, “The Drownes Club”. His humorous, often hilarious, articles were published in more than 80 magazines, including contributions to “Punch” over a period of sixty years. Wodehouse was knighted shortly before his death in 1975.

There is no mystery about her success. France’s most acclaimed crime writer is a fan both of P.G. Wodehouse and Stendhal. Her detective stories are published in 40 countries. Her novels about the kindly, quixotic Commissaire Adamsberg are unique, presenting a France that resembles Simenon’s in its concreteness, but with a fantastical, even surreal, twist: werewolves, vampires and armies of ghosts on horseback. Fred Vargas is the pseudonym of French historian, archaeologist and writer Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau, born in 1957 in Paris. She mostly writes police thrillers (policiers). They take place in Paris and feature the adventures of Chief Inspector Adamsberg and his team. Her interest in the Middle Ages is manifest in many of her novels, especially through the person of Marc Vandoosler, a young specialist in the period. British Crime Writers’ Association has awarded her its annual International Dagger three times since the prize was inaugurated in 2006.

A brief conversation with Octavia E. Butler: Who is Octavia E. Butler? Where is she headed? Where has she been?

Who am I? I'm a 56-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm comfortably asocial — a hermit living in a large city — a pessimist if I'm not careful; a student, endlessly curious; a feminist; an African American; a former Baptist; and an oil and water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive. What have you written?

Novels, short stories, and essays. I've had 11 novels published so far. They are Patternmaster, Mind of my Mind, Survivor, Kindred, Wild Seed, Clay's Ark, Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Parable of the Talents won a Nebula award as 2000. I've also had published a book of short fiction and nonfiction called Bloodchild and Other Stories. One story in this collection, "Speech Sounds," won a Hugo award as best short story of 1984. The title story, "Bloodchild," won both the 1985 Hugo and the 1984 Nebula awards as best novelette. And, speaking of awards, in 1995 I received a MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In 2000, I received a lifetime achievement award in writing from PEN.

What were your educational preparations for a writing career?

I graduated from Pasadena City College in 1968 (Pasadena, California is my home town). Then I attended California State University, Los Angeles. I also took a few extension classes at UCLA. But the most valuable help I received with my writing came from two workshops. The first was the Open Door Program of the Screenwriter's Guild of America, West. I attended from 1969-1970. The second was Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop which I attended in 1970.

Ever since her debut novel “Like Water for Chocolate” (1989), Laura Esquivel has entranced the world with her immaculate magical realism – an intensely sensual work of art that explores in the most indigenous of fashions the intertwining universes of food, passion and heartbreak. For more than 20 years now, she is heralded as the most famous and celebrated Mexican writer of her generation, a startling commercial success that once again affirms the crucial place of women in contemporary literature, challenges the borders of globalization and multiculturalism and develops a sophisticated taste for the exotic and the culturally idiosyncratic. After the release of the film version in 1992, “Like Water for Chocolate” became internationally known and loved. The book has sold more than 4.5 million copies. Esquivel has continued to show her creative flair and lyrical style in her later work. Accompanied by a collection of music, her second novel “The Law of Love” (1996) combined romance and science fiction. “Between the Fires” (2000) featured essays on life, love, and food and “Malinche” (2006), explores the life of a near mythic figure in Mexican history.

José Carlos Somoza is a prominent Spanish author born in Havana, Cuba. In 1960 his family moved to Spain after being exiled for political reasons. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in psychiatry, but he gave up medicine in order to be a full-time writer. Since 1994 he has dedicated his professional life entirely to writing. He is the author of six novels. In 2000 he was shortlisted for the Nadal Prize, one of the most important literary prizes in Spain. Somoza’s works are usually mixture of classic thriller and science fiction, wrapped in enigma. He manages to keep all the mysteries beguiling as they begin to wrap themselves around each other. The stories invariably come to a surprising and satisfying conclusion, leaving no doubt as to the mastery of Somoza's storytelling. Among his best known novels are “The Athenian Murders”, “The Bait”, “The Art of Murder” and “The Key of Doom”, all published in Bulgaria.

An honorary President of the American Humanist Association, a war-prisoner in Dresden, 1945 and a veteran from World War II, a chemist and an anthropologist, Kurt Vonnegut is among the most influential, experimental writers of the past century. His most celebrated piece of work, the semi-autobiographical “Slaughterhouse Five” (1969), is considered one of the best American novels of the 20th century according to Time magazine – it explores an experimental narrative structure, using space and time trips, and satirically describes his own experience of the Second World War. A brilliant master of gallows humor and science fiction, a “funny” interpreter of history and politics’ cruelty and injustice, Kurt Vonnegut is one of the most prominent social figures of the post-war period and an author, whose work is already a classic.