Vonnegut’s War: The Making of Slaughterhouse-Five

Banned, burned, and censored, Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five is widely regarded as one of the greatest (and most controversial) novels of the twentieth century. Fusing vivid biography with popular history and close textual analysis, Vonnegut's War tells the fascinating story of the making of a modern classic and the writer that created it.

New archival discoveries and recently released oral histories give us the fullest account yet published of Vonnegut's real-life prisoner-of-war experiences at Stalag IV-B and Dresden, which heavily influenced Slaughterhouse-Five. A recently discovered trove of letters introduces us to his first wife, Jane Cox Vonnegut, and her influence on his writing. Along the way, we also encounter UFOs and aliens, grapple with the shadow cast by the Vietnam war, and unearth the stranger-than-fiction tale of David Irving’s The Destruction of Dresden, the historical reference behind Vonnegut's writing about the Dresden firebombing.

This book sheds light on one of America’s most beloved writers and explores how cultural forces helped to shape a modern masterpiece of storytelling.

• Publication date: 20 August 2026
• Page count: 280
• Dimensions: Height 224 mm; Width 147 mm; Thickness 19 mm
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9781350580008