A vast, wildly inventive novel set mainly in Europe near the end of the Second World War. Tyrone Slothrop, an American lieutenant in London, finds that places where German V-2 rockets fall seem oddly linked to his own past. Following that mystery, he drifts through a huge cast of scientists, soldiers, spies and eccentrics. The book mixes science, history, comedy, song and dark reflection on war, industry and control. It is demanding and strange, but it is widely regarded as a landmark of modern American fiction.
Quotes
A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.
They are in Love. Fuck the War.
Death has come in the pantry door: stands watching them, iron and patient, with a look that says try to tickle me.
It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology...by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war.