Ripples Book Club, October 2026 — Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five

Welcome to our English-language book club! This book club is for you if you’d like to: • meet like-minded people and have engaging conversations about the books we read • improve or maintain your English vocabulary, reading comprehension, and speaking skills Participation is free for now, but registration is required so we can keep the group small and comfortable (maximum 10 people). If you’d like to join, send me an email to cmlwcGxlc2Jvb2tjbHViMjAyNiB8IGdtYWlsICEgY29t and I’ll confirm your registration provided that free spots are still available. You can order the book online at Libristo, Amazon etc., or borrow it from libraries such as Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library. About the book: Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. Just as Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.” Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.