
HBC Set Books
HBC54 Set Book: Slaughterhouse-Five
HBC54 Set Book: Slaughterhouse-Five
An American classic, named by Modern Library as one of the top 20 best novels of all time, Slaughterhouse-Five is Kurt Vonnegut’s semi-autobiographical, science fiction-infused anti-war masterpiece that defies genre. This letterpress-printed edition of Slaughterhouse-Five is illustrated by Julian De Narvaez with an introduction by Jess Walter and a frontispiece by Edith Vonnegut from Suntup Editions. At 6x9” with about 240 pages and 6 color illustrations, it will be so much fun to bind! This will be a striking set book for next year.
The cost will be $200 if local pickup; otherwise, there will be a $15 shipping fee and there will be at least one scholarship book available.
Contact Beth Redmond if you have questions: exhibitions@handbookbinders.org.
Published on March 31, 1969, Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW, much like Vonnegut did. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.”
An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite the book being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.
In 2019, The New Yorker wrote, “Vonnegut’s novel is about that, about the inevitability of human violence, and about what it does to the not particularly violent human beings who get caught up in it.” Slaughterhouse-Five remained on the New York Times bestseller list for a total of sixteen weeks. The novel was a finalist for the National Book Award, and it was nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo.