Book description
Pay attention please to the life of Walter F. Starbuck.
Nineteen-hundred and Thirteen gave him the gift of life.
Nineteenth-hundred and Thirty-one sent him to Harvard.
Nineteen-hundred and Thirty-eight got him a job in the federal
government. Nineteen-hundred and Seventy gave him a job in the Nixon
White House. Nineteen-hundred and Seventy-five sent him to prison for
his part in the American political scandals known collectively as 'Watergate'.
Now Walter F. Starbuck is coming out of jail, into the brave new
world of 1980s Manhattan, and this is the story of his first
twenty-four hours of freedom.
Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922 and studied
biochemistry at Cornell University. During WWII, as a prisoner of war in
Germany, he witnessed the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers, an
experience which inspired
Slaughterhouse Five
. Vonnegut's black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination
first captured America's attention in
The Sirens of Titan
in 1959 and according to
Harper's
Magazine, established him as 'a true artist' with
Cat's Cradle
in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene declared, 'one of the best living
American writers'. Vonnegut died in April 2007.
