Review of Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

This satiric tale follows the journey of Kilgore Trout, a struggling science fiction writer who answers an invitation to the Midland City Arts Festival. Meeting with a prominent business owner (Dwayne Hoover), he quickly realises that Hoover believes his book “Now It Can Be Told” the be truth and slowly goes insane throughout the course of the interaction, eventually becoming violent and ending up in hospital.
It’s a story with themes examining free will, mental illness and social inequality as well as casting a critical eye over American society as a whole with focusses on race, the poor and the environment.

Whilst simple in structure and filled with repetitive language, the book is holds powerful undertones that are still relevant today, with his usual tone of irony, satire and metafiction.

Don’t watch the film though, it’s terrible.

– John, Information Adviser at York St John University

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