1969 Book Club

Imprisoned beneath the city of Dresden during the infamous 1945 Allied bombing of that city, this was Vonnegut’s account of that firestorm seen through the eyes of his protagonist Billy Pilgrim – “tall and weak, and shaped like a bottle of Coca-Cola.” Pilgrim’s war service is followed by other traumas as he establishes himself as an optometrist and raises his own family. The book’s anti-war sentiment struck a chord in 1969 and became Vonnegut’s most enduring success, while establishing him as one of America’s most distinctive literary voices.