In this powerful contemporary classic, Kurt Vonnegut exposes the insanity and inhumanity of war through the lens of absurdism. Billy Pilgrim, a traumatized American POW who survived the Dresden bombing during World War II, becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens. Under their watchful gaze, he must relive his life over and over again, coming at last to some understanding of the human comedy.Both deeply funny and deadly serious, Slaughterhouse-Five became perhaps the signature antiwar novel of the 1960s, a cry of protest against brutality in the service of authority. Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.