“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
— from Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut

In novels, essays, and plays produced during a career that spanned more than four decades, Kurt Vonnegut was the voice of several generations, a champion for those who, like himself, viewed society’s excesses and eccentricities with more than a little skepticism.
Vonnegut was hailed as a “literary idol” whose works became “classics of the American counterculture,”

Early Life
Writer, novelist. Born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Kurt Vonnegut is considered one of the most influential American novelists of the twentieth century. He blended literature with science fiction and humor, the absurd with pointed social commentary. Vonnegut created his own unique world in each of his novels and filled them with unusual characters, such as the alien race known as the Tralfamadorians inSlaughterhouse-Five (1969).

After studying at Cornell University from 1940 to 1942, Kurt Vonnegut enlisted the U.S. Army. He was sent by the army to what is now Carnegie Mellon University to study engineering in 1943.
Soon after his return from the war, Kurt Vonnegut married his high school girlfriend, Jane Marie Cox. The couple had three children. The Vonneguts also adopted his sister's three children after her death in 1958.

Writing Debut
Showing his talent for satire, his first novel, Player Piano, took on corporate culture and was published in 1952. More novels followed, including The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1961), and Cat's Cradle (1963). War remained a recurring element in his work and one of his best-known works, Slaughterhouse-Five, draws some of its dramatic power from his own experiences. This exploration of the human condition mixed with the fantastical struck a cord with readers, giving Vonnegut his first best-selling novel.

Later Years
His last book was A Man Without a Country, a collection of biographical essays. In it, he expressed his views on politics and art as well as shed more light on his own life.

Kurt Vonnegut died on April 11, 2007, at the age of 84, as a result of head injuries sustained in a fall at his home in New York a few weeks earlier. He was survived by his second wife, photographer Jill Krementz, their adopted daughter, Lily, and six children from his first marriage.