Kurt Vonnegut Biography

Kurt Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis where he grew up. He went to Cornell University but left it in 1943 to enlist himself in the US Army. He studied mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and the University of Tennessee as a part of his military training. After his training, to fight World War II, he was deployed by the US Army to Europe. During this time, he was captured by the German Army in the Battle of the Bulge and became a prisoner of war. He was interned in a meat locker of a slaughterhouse in Dresden when the Allied bombing occurred, which he survived. After the war, he married Jane Marie Cox, with whom he attended University of Chicago while working for the City News Bureau.

During his career that spanned over 50 years, Vonnegut published 14 novels, three short-story collections, five plays and five nonfiction works. Many other collections of his were published after his death on April 11, 2007. Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. Although the novel received positive reception, it was not a commercial success. It was the sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, published in 1969, that rocketed Vonnegut to fame and recognition. The novel resonated with the readers’ despair of the ongoing Vietnam War. Vonnegut became the face of anti-war movements in the US and was invited to deliver lectures and speeches at various political events and rallies. He stopped writing novels altogether in 1971 but with the publication of several satirical books, including Jailbird (1979), Deadeye Dick (1982), Galápagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987) and Hocus Pocus (1990), he regained his popularity.