Billy Pilgrim - hapless barber's assistant, successful optometrist, alien abductee, senile widower, and soldier - has become unstuck in time.Hiding in the basement of a slaughterhouse in Dresden, with the city and its inhabitants burning above him, he finds himself a survivor of one of the most deadly and destructive battles of the Second World War. From Dresden's burning city to later life in America, leaping through time and space, Slaughterhouse 5 explores what war does to the mind and why remembering matters.'A book to read and reread. He is a true artist' New York Times'The great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century' George Saunders'A graceful, ferociously humorous, sarcastic and ultimately compassionate parable about man's power for evil and his capacity for grace' Sunday Times