Galapagos: A Novel (Delta Fiction)

“A madcap genealogical adventure . . . Vonnegut is a postmodern Mark Twain.”The New York Times Book Review

Galápagos takes the reader back one million years, to A.D. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galápagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, and totally different human race. In this inimitable novel, America’ s master satirist looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry–and all that is worth saving.

Praise for Galápagos

“The best Vonnegut novel yet!”—John Irving

“Beautiful . . . provocative, arresting reading.”USA Today

“A satire in the classic tradition . . . a dark vision, a heartfelt warning.”The Detroit Free Press
 
“Interesting, engaging, sad and yet very funny . . . Vonnegut is still in top form. If he has no prescription for alleviating the pain of the human condition, at least he is a first-rate diagnostician.”—Susan Isaacs, Newsday
 
“Dark . . . original and funny.”People
 
“A triumph of style, originality and warped yet consistent logic . . . a condensation, an evolution of Vonnegut’s entire career, including all the issues and questions he has pursued relentlessly for four decades.”The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“Wild details, wry humor, outrageous characters . . . Galápagos is a comic lament, a sadly ironic vison.”St. Louis Post-Dispatch
 
“A work of high comedy, sadness and imagination.”The Denver Post
 
“Wacky wit and irreverent imagination .  . . and the full range of technical innovations have made [Vonnegut] America’s preeminent experimental novelist.”The Minneapolis Star and Tribune

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Published Jan 12, 1999

336 pages

Average rating: 7.19

37 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

Derby
Mar 13, 2025
10/10 stars
Wow! First time reading this author and it was amazing. The plot moves strangely through the pages as you really embrace a mythical alternative. Do your self a favor, READ the book, do not listen. It was written to be read and you will see why. Dive in!
dapheyduck
Aug 06, 2022
9/10 stars
The thing I admire about Vonnegut is his ability to take huge concepts—life, death, war, trauma, human audacity, love, greed, and so on—and boil them down so simply that you realize just how ridiculous and surreal the human condition is. While I struggle to read omniscient pov, having the omniscient narrator be a named character (a ghost who has been studying humans for a million years), made this reading experience much better. This was an interesting read, a little melancholy, a little nihilistic, but uplifting in that it reminds you to stop taking things so damn seriously.

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