Slaughterhouse-Five

Vonnegut’s famously weird war novel made multiple appearances on What Should I Read Next, as early as Episode 4: Reading as escape, hating lots of books, and finding new fiction and as recently as Episode 327: Brilliant books that ask big questions. It’s one of the most frequently banned books in American classrooms due to sexual content, violence, and obscene language. Vonnegut responded to several of the bannings, writing: “If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.” Vonnegut’s novel follows WWII veteran Billy Pilgrim who gets “unstuck in time,” taking the reader along on a journey of flashbacks, time travel, and life on another planet. The events of the novel, while strange and darkly humorous, are based on Vonnegut’s own war service and present a deeply unsettling picture of combat PTSD.