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Review
“A great artist.”—Cincinnati Enquirer
“A shaking up in the kaleidoscope of laughter . . . Reading Vonnegut is addictive!”—Commonwealth
“Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist.”—Time
“A shaking up in the kaleidoscope of laughter . . . Reading Vonnegut is addictive!”—Commonwealth
“Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist.”—Time
Product Description
Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.
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First Sentence
MY NAME is Howard W. Campbell, Jr. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
MY NAME is Howard W. Campbell, Jr. Read the first page
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Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
An odd ending,
By
Ce commentaire est de: Mother Night: A Novel (Paperback)
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."The moral of the story is stated in the introduction, I suppose for people that might ask themselves what happened. The most shocking part is the ending, which happened somewhat unexpectedly that I didn't know what I was supposed to think. Vonnegut manages to weave a tale full of comical characters, not that they seemed unrealistic. I noticed the beginning of the story was more humorous, and by the end of the story, it become quite serious. In Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut, we follow Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American who moved to Germany, and became a famous playwright and a Nazi propagandist. In the beginning, we see Howard inside an Israeli prison, waiting for his trial. He is told to write his story, because people think that they will discover something from it. Thus, Howard commences to write his memoirs. We follow Howard through his married life with Helga, how he transmitted secret codes during the war as a secret agent for America that not even he knew of, and when he started living in New York. How does Howard, without his wife, live? If he isn't considered a spy for America, what is he considered? Contains spoilers: I enjoyed greatly how Howard, the playwright, claimed that as a writer, he should've known when was a good time to end his story, his life.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unconvential in it's conventionality,
By Robert DellaFave (Fort Lee, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
Ce commentaire est de: Mother Night: A Novel (Paperback)
This is my third endeavor through the works of Kurt Vonnegut and it seems that 'Mother Night' plays out as a more conventional novel in terms of structure and theme. It's sheer brilliance is evident straight from the introduction; where Vonnegut asks that we be good at what we pretend to be, because that's who we will become. He also sets up the dark humor presented in the book by inplicating a second moral, simply stated: "When you're dead you're dead." 'Mother Night' follows the narrative of Howard Campbell, war criminal, throughout his years following the time when he was an agent of the United States in Germany during WWII. Vonnegut, as commonplace in most of his novels, satirizes war and it's absurdity, love, race, and the meaning that we attribute to our lives in a meaningless world where there is essentially no escape. However, the book, unlike typical Vonnegut, focuses on one primary theme; that of the significance of truth. For the characters in 'Mother Night' becoming spies has left them with no country and no hope. What essentially keeps them (among them Campbell) is curiousity. However, as will be revealed during the course of the novel, even this will be crushed as lies become lies and then become truths, and Campbell will remain frozen in his tracks, a victim of the country that he helped and separated from his nation of two, the only nation that had any significance. A well-written narrative, funny and thought provoking. We laugh, but only a bit tentatively, as we watch the 'truth' unfold and wonder if it was worth knowing at all.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A novel about serving evil too openly and good too secretly,
By Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
Ce commentaire est de: Mother Night: A Novel (Paperback)
To the best of my knowledge, there really is no other writer quite like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Mother Night appears to be a rather straightforward, albeit quirky, novel at first glance, but as one delves down into the heart of Vonnegut's prose one finds grounds for contemplation of some of life's most serious issues. This novel is the first-hand account of Howard Campbell, Jr., a most remarkable character. Campbell is an American-born citizen who moved to Germany as a child and became the English-speaking radio mouthpiece for Nazi Germany during World War II. In the fifteen years since the end of the war, he has been living an almost invisible life in a New York City attic apartment. He misses his German wife Helga who died in the war, sometimes thinks about his pre-war life as a successful writer of plays and poems, and perhaps just waits for history to find him once again. As we begin the novel, he has been found and is writing this account from a jail cell in Israel, awaiting trial for his crimes against humanity. While he is reviled by almost everyone on earth as an American Nazi traitor, the truth is that he was actually an agent working for the American government during the war; this is a truth he cannot prove, though. Thus, in this 1961 novel, the hero is ostensibly a Nazi war criminal.The primary moral of Mother Night, Vonnegut tells us in his introduction, is that "we are what we pretend to be" and should thus be pretty darned careful about what we are pretending to be (a secondary moral being the less enlightening statement "when you're dead, you're dead"). In the eyes of the entire world, Campbell is exactly what he pretended to be during the war, a traitorous Nazi purveyor of propaganda who mocked and demoralized allied troops as well as regular citizens. Internally, Campbell hardly knows what he is anymore; he claims no country, no political values, wanting only to live in a "nation of two" with his beloved wife Helga once again. A series of significant events forces Campbell out of the cocoon of his past fifteen years, and his thoughts and actions along the way provide big juicy morsels of food for thought: taking personal responsibility for one's actions, the harsh truths of war and peace, the sometimes vast differences between truth and fact, individual redemption before self and society, finding direction and a purpose in a world gone mad, etc. Vonnegut's scythe-like dark humor cuts deeper than mere satire, aiming directly at some of the darker sections of the human heart, areas which most individuals too often ignore or refuse to acknowledge. The gallows humor can be quite funny on the surface, but it is in actuality a scalpel which Vonnegut wields to open up the heart and soul of the reader for self-examination. Mother's Night, the title of which is taken from Goethe's Faust, is a relatively short but very powerful novel.
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