Reading Order
Slaughterhouse-Five Reading Order
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) is a complete standalone novel. It follows Billy Pilgrim, an American soldier captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge and held in an underground slaughterhouse in Dresden — where he survives the Allied firebombing of February 1945 that killed an estimated 25,000 people. Billy has become unstuck in time, moving involuntarily between moments of his life, and has been abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore who exist in all moments simultaneously. Semi-autobiographical — Vonnegut himself survived the Dresden firebombing.
Where to start
Slaughterhouse-Five
Complete Slaughterhouse-Five Book List
- 1Buy
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut·1969·Standalone — Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time, survivor of the Dresden firebombing; the great anti-war novel of the Vietnam era; Vonnegut's semi-autobiographical masterwork; famous for the refrain 'So it goes' - Buy
Mother Night
OptionalKurt Vonnegut·1962·Vonnegut's novel of an American spy in Nazi Germany who poses as a Nazi propagandist — darker and more concentrated than Slaughterhouse-Five, set in the same World War Two world; the most thematically serious of his early novels - Buy
Cat's Cradle
OptionalKurt Vonnegut·1963·Vonnegut's satirical novel of science, religion, and the end of the world — the companion piece to Slaughterhouse-Five in his career; funnier and more formally inventive, and one of the most widely read of his other novels
Slaughterhouse-Five — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Slaughterhouse-Five a standalone?
Yes — Slaughterhouse-Five is entirely self-contained and has no sequel. Kurt Vonnegut's other novels — Cat's Cradle (1963), Mother Night (1962), Breakfast of Champions (1973) — are independent works. The Tralfamadorians appear in both Slaughterhouse-Five and The Sirens of Titan (1959), but the novels are not connected in plot.
What does 'So it goes' mean in Slaughterhouse-Five?
'So it goes' is Vonnegut's refrain in Slaughterhouse-Five — it appears every time death is mentioned (106 times in the novel). The phrase is the Tralfamadorian response to death: since Tralfamadorians can see all moments simultaneously, they know that the dead are still alive in past moments, so death is not significant. Vonnegut uses the refrain to do two things simultaneously: to suggest the numbing of moral response that happens when death becomes routine (as it did in World War Two), and to refuse to let the reader become numb — the repetition keeps drawing attention to the death toll.
Is Slaughterhouse-Five based on a true story?
Slaughterhouse-Five is based partly on Vonnegut's own experience. He was an American soldier captured during the Battle of the Bulge, held as a prisoner of war in Dresden, and survived the Allied firebombing of Dresden in February 1945 in an underground slaughterhouse. The specific events of Billy Pilgrim's story — the time travel, the Tralfamadorians, the Montana Wildhack subplot — are fictional. Vonnegut spent twenty years trying to write about Dresden before finding the time-travel structure that allowed him to approach it.
Why is Slaughterhouse-Five frequently banned?
Slaughterhouse-Five has been one of the most frequently challenged and banned books in American schools since its publication in 1969. It has been challenged for language, sexual content, its use of the phrase 'so it goes' as allegedly trivializing death, and its anti-war stance. It was publicly burned in Drake, North Dakota, in 1973. Vonnegut wrote extensively about these censorship attempts and was generally philosophical about them, noting that the books usually become more widely read after being banned.
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.