Who wrote the novel "Slaughterhouse-Five"?

Kurt Vonnegut wrote the novel "Slaughterhouse-Five." Published in 1969, its full title is "Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death."

The novel draws heavily on Vonnegut's experience as an American soldier during World War II. He survived the 1945 firebombing of Dresden while held as a prisoner of war, sheltering in an underground meat locker called Slaughterhouse Five. The book's protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, also survives Dresden and becomes "unstuck in time," experiencing his life out of chronological order.

Although often classified as science fiction because of Billy's encounters with aliens and time travel, the novel is also an anti-war satire, dark comedy, and semi-autobiographical work. A common mix-up is assuming the book is primarily about extraterrestrials; the Tralfamadorians and their ideas about time help Vonnegut explore trauma, death, and the difficulty of telling a conventional war story.