Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse number five
I like books that go beyond genre boundaries. Ideally, they should be interesting linguistically, non-chronologically, and somewhat deceive the reader. That is why I appreciate Lavi Tidhar, Sylvain Neuvel and Cixin Liu. Who knows if it all started with Kurt Vonnegut, namely Slaughterhouse number five, which in the old PIW edition was quietly at my house. I reached for it quite early and somehow it happened that it became one of the breakthrough readings for me.
The most important theme I remember from this book is, of course, time travel. Tralfamadorians, or aliens who kidnap the main character of the Slaughterhouse and keep him in their zoo, live non-linearly, although their time is limited. Instead, they can go back to any moment, visit old age before youth, repeat selected moments many times. It is a metaphor for plunging into memories, voluntary and not, as in the case of PTSD. After all, Slaughterhouse is a novel about war, definitely anti-war. Vonnegut expresses this attitude gently and ironically. This whole novel may seem a bit naive and simple-minded, like Billy Pilgrim, its protagonist. Meanwhile, it is a masterful text that devours deeply into heads and hearts. Having a pacifist message but not deceiving anyone, including the author that there will never be war again, and the old ones can be forgotten. A side effect of dealing with this novel will be time travel skills. It comes in very handy, I promise!
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