Catch-22

Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage. Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never even met keep trying to kill him. Joseph Heller's bestselling novel is a hilarious and tragic satire on military madness, and the tale of one man's efforts to survive it. Review: It is a rare book in that it has the ability to make you laugh out loud and be deeply moved within a few pages. -- Adam Staten * British Journal of General Practice * Wildly original, brutally gruesome, a dazzling performance that will outrage as many readers as it delights. Vulgarly, bitterly funny, it will not be forgotten by those who can take it * New York Times * Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny and fantastically unique. No one has ever written a book like this * Financial Times * Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny, and fantastically unique. No one has ever written a book like this * Financial Times * An apocalyptic masterpiece * Chicago Times * It is the Rock and Roll of novels -- Norman Mailer Catch-22 is the only war novel I've ever read that makes any sense -- Harper Lee Once you "get it" it is a gripping and devastating insight into the pointlessness and bureaucracy of war and its consequences * The Times * The most devastating satire ever written about the lunacy of war and military bureaucracy * Antony Beevor * Wildly original, brutally gruesome, a dazzling performance that will outrage as many readers as it delights. Vulgarly, bitterly, savagely funny, it will not be forgotten by those who can take it * New York Times * Prizes: Runner-up for The BBC Big Read Top 21 2003 and The BBC Big Read Top 100 2003. Short-listed for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003. Author Biography: Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1923. In 1961, he published Catch-22, which became a bestseller and, in 1970, a film. He went on to write such novels as Something Happened, God Knows, Picture This, Closing Time (the sequel to Catch-22), and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. Heller died in December 1999. One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, now celebrating its 50th anniversary.