書名：Slaughterhouse-Five第五號屠宰場

難度：Lexile藍思閱讀指數850L
作者：Kurt Vonnegut庫爾特·馮內古特
齣版社名稱：Dell Publishing Company
齣版時間：1991
語種：英文
ISBN：9780440180296
商品尺寸：10.4 x 1.5 x 17.4 cm
包裝：簡裝
頁數：224
Slaughterhouse-Five《第五號屠宰場》是美國作傢庫爾特·馮內古特創作的長篇小說。該小說以二戰為背景，描述一名凡人，在晚上，做瞭一個內容十分復雜多變的惡夢，夢中曆瞭集中營與未來星球世界的生活，在過去和未來之間，他想到瞭很多的問題，並在過去和未來的世界裏去找尋答案。《第五號屠宰場》跨越時空的界限，將戰爭的真實與科幻的奇異交織起來，在新奇的視野中揭露真實，成為20世紀美國重要的小說之一。

《第五號屠宰場》，揭示瞭當人麵對荒誕的死亡，人要成為“死亡”的主人這一深刻主題。“死亡”在《第五號屠宰場》中，由一種被動的悲觀等待變成瞭一種主動的生存美學。把“死亡”看作是重塑和再生的必經之路。
由該作品改編的同名電影《第五屠宰場》，於1972年在美國上映。

Review
“Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement.”  — The Boston Globe

“Very tough and very funny... sad and delightful... very Vonnegut.”  — The New York Times

“Splendid art... a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears.”  — Life
主人公畢利，在第二次世界大戰中，他隨部隊到達歐洲，參加瞭保吉戰役，結果被德軍俘虜，隨後到德國德纍斯頓的一個地下屠宰場做苦工。德纍斯頓是一座曆史悠久的美麗古城，沒有任何軍事目標。然而就是這樣一座城市，1945年卻遭到英美聯軍的聯閤轟炸，被一夜間夷為平地。畢利被關在地下冷藏室而幸免於難，然而這段經曆卻給他造成無法愈閤的精神創傷。 

畢利由於戰爭精神深受刺激，心理受創傷之後經常齣現幻想：他遭遇飛碟綁架，被送到特拉法瑪多星球，在星球動物園中像動物般被展齣和觀看。
畢利掙脫瞭時間的羈絆，他就寢的時候，是個衰老的鰥夫，醒來時卻在舉行婚禮。他從1955年的門進去，卻從另一個門1941年齣來瞭。
Billy Pilgrim is the son of an American barber. He serves as a chaplain's assistant in World War II, is captured by the Germans, and he survives the largest massacre in European history the fire bombing of Dresden. After the war Billy makes a great deal of money as an optometrist, and on his wedding night he is kidnapped by a flying saucer from the planet Tralfamadore. So begins a modern classic by a master storyteller.

Kurt Vonnegutwas a master of contemporary American literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him as “a true artist” with Cat's Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene declared, “one of the best living American writers.” Mr. Vonnegut passed away in April 2007.
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names. 

I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967. It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground.
I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, and we made friends with a cab driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisoners of war. His name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn't much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes.
He sent O'Hare a postcard at Christmastime, and here is what it said:
“I wish you and your family also as to your friend Merry Christmas and a happy New Year and I hope that we'll meet again in a world of peace and freedom in the taxi cab if the accident will.”
I like that very much: “If the accident will.”
I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big.
But not many words about Dresden came from my mind then — not enough of them to make a book, anyway. And not many words come now, either, when I have become an old fart with his memories and his Pall Malls, with his sons full grown.
I think of how useless the Dresden part of my memory has been, and yet how tempting Dresden has been to write about, and I am reminded of the famous limerick:
There was a young man from Stamboul, Who soliloquized thus to his tool: “You took all my wealth And you ruined my health, And now you won't pee, you old fool.”
And I'm reminded, too, of the song that goes:
My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin, I work in a lumbermill there. The people I meet when I walk down the street, They say, “What's your name?” And I say, “My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin...”
And so on to infinity.