Matadero cinco: La cruzada de los niños / Slaughterhouse-Five (Spanish Edition)
Kurt Vonnegut quería escribir una novela sobre la guerra. Pero tenía dos problemas. El primero, que le hacía volver a lo que él había sufrido: sobrevivió al bombardeo de Dresde, el más cruento de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y fue hecho prisionero de guerra. El segundo, que le daba pavor que llevasen la historia al cine (como le advirtió que pasaría una buena amiga suya) y la interpretase una gran estrella, un actor muy machote, y los niños quisiesen ir también a la guerra y las guerras no se acabaran nunca.
Pero escribió esa novela, y se prometió que sería distinta a todas las demás. Que hablaría de «la cruzada de los niños». Y que en ella habría miedo y risa y viajes en el tiempo y ternura y estupor y sorpresa y fragilidad.
Y esa novela se convirtió en la gran novela antibélica de todos los tiempos. En el emblema de la contracultura de los sesenta. En uno de los mayores clásicos de la narrativa estadounidense. En este libro que ahora sostiene el lector, en el que late el corazón asustado y risueño de Vonnegut dentro de un búnker bombardeado y también la promesa infantil (y bonita) de que no habrá más guerras.
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.”
An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.” George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.”
Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.
“Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement.”—The Boston Globe
Pero escribió esa novela, y se prometió que sería distinta a todas las demás. Que hablaría de «la cruzada de los niños». Y que en ella habría miedo y risa y viajes en el tiempo y ternura y estupor y sorpresa y fragilidad.
Y esa novela se convirtió en la gran novela antibélica de todos los tiempos. En el emblema de la contracultura de los sesenta. En uno de los mayores clásicos de la narrativa estadounidense. En este libro que ahora sostiene el lector, en el que late el corazón asustado y risueño de Vonnegut dentro de un búnker bombardeado y también la promesa infantil (y bonita) de que no habrá más guerras.
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.”
An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.” George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.”
Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.
“Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement.”—The Boston Globe
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Community Reviews
Does anyone feel like you've read one Vonnegut you can guess what the rest are about? I have read several and I have noticed there is always some reference to Hitler, a hotel and someone that comes from a strange family.
This was my Big Damn Classic of 2018 and it was a very good pick! Thanks, voters!
This is a semi-autobiographical novel from Vonnegut (a native Hoosier) and it is rooted in the bombing of Dresden. I forget which novel introduced me to Dresden but, prior to that novel, I had not heard of the bombing. Why is this? This had more casualties than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So why is it lost in history? Dresden was one of the few cities that escaped damages from the war until the very end, when the entire city was firebombed, killing nearly every person there.
Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden at the time of the bombing, living in a slaughterhouse. This novel isn't a retelling, strictly, of his time there. Vonnegut tells us, in the beginning, how hard this was to write, how many stops and starts he went through, just to get this on paper. Then we head into Billy Pilgrim's world.
It's a strange world of joining the Army, trying to become an Optometrist, time travel, and being abducted by aliens. Billy's world is a confusing mess of a life that he is at peace with. He has the ability to become unstuck in time, and travel up and down his own life. He cannot change anything, but he learns to appreciate everything that happens. Once he starts speaking publicly on being abducted by aliens and being put in their zoo with a porn star....this is about when people start thinking he's crazy.
Billy doesn't seem like someone who ever should have been in the Army, let alone fighting in the war. He wants to give up many times, but another soldier, Weary, won't let him. They end up captured and eventually forced to Dresden as labor.
Vonnegut packs in a lot to this small book. Each word, each sentence has weight. I'm very glad I read this (finally!)
This is a semi-autobiographical novel from Vonnegut (a native Hoosier) and it is rooted in the bombing of Dresden. I forget which novel introduced me to Dresden but, prior to that novel, I had not heard of the bombing. Why is this? This had more casualties than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So why is it lost in history? Dresden was one of the few cities that escaped damages from the war until the very end, when the entire city was firebombed, killing nearly every person there.
Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden at the time of the bombing, living in a slaughterhouse. This novel isn't a retelling, strictly, of his time there. Vonnegut tells us, in the beginning, how hard this was to write, how many stops and starts he went through, just to get this on paper. Then we head into Billy Pilgrim's world.
It's a strange world of joining the Army, trying to become an Optometrist, time travel, and being abducted by aliens. Billy's world is a confusing mess of a life that he is at peace with. He has the ability to become unstuck in time, and travel up and down his own life. He cannot change anything, but he learns to appreciate everything that happens. Once he starts speaking publicly on being abducted by aliens and being put in their zoo with a porn star....this is about when people start thinking he's crazy.
Billy doesn't seem like someone who ever should have been in the Army, let alone fighting in the war. He wants to give up many times, but another soldier, Weary, won't let him. They end up captured and eventually forced to Dresden as labor.
Vonnegut packs in a lot to this small book. Each word, each sentence has weight. I'm very glad I read this (finally!)
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