The Sirens of Titan

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Kurt Vonnegut: The Sirens of Titan (1998)

336 pages

English language

Published Sept. 8, 1998

ISBN:
978-0-385-33349-8
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5 stars (3 reviews)

"His best book," Esquire wrote of Kurt Vonnegut's 1959 novel The Sirens of Titan, adding, "he dares not only to ask the ultimate question about the meaning of life, but to answer it." This novel fits into that aspect of the Vonnegut canon that might be classified as science fiction, a quality that once led Time to describe Vonnegut as "George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer ... a zany but moral mad scientist."

The Sirens of Titan was perhaps the novel that began the Vonnegut phenomenon with readers. The story is a fabulous trip, spinning madly through space and time in pursuit of nothing less than a fundamental understanding of the meaning of life. It takes place at a time in the future, when "only the human soul remained terra incognita ... the Nightmare Ages, falling roughly, give or take a few years, between the …

30 editions

reviewed The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

A wonderful read

5 stars

It started off as a fun and weird scifi book, to a fun and cynical take on the human condition, to a beautiful take on the meaning of life. One of Constants last lines on Titan made tears come to my eyes.

Edit: The more and more I think on it the more I like this book. I will definitely be reading it again at some point.

I loved every bit of this book.

5 stars

8 days ago I picked up a different book entirely - one of the classics - and found myself really struggling to get into it. After an hour I'd read the same 20 pages 3 or 4 times. It was no good, I wasn't enjoying it at all - something must be done!

So I put it down and instead reached into the bookshelf for comfort and enjoyment and my hand came across Kurt Vonnegut, as it so often has before.

This book was what the doctor ordered.

This book took me through time and space but mostly just through humanity.

This book taught me everything and nothing - as all good books should.

This book had me laughing out loud in the OBA Public Library, Oosterdokskade, Amsterdam Centraal, Holland, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way.

And so it goes.