God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

Description

In 1998, Kurt Vonnegut was sent to the afterlife by National Public Radio to conduct a series of (fictionalised) interviews. This adventure takes the form of a series of transcripts from these encounters - brief pieces which were originally read on WNYC, Manhattan's public radio station, but have now been revised and rewritten. What begins as a series of 90-second radio interviews evolves into a provocative collection of musings about who and what people live for, featuring a fantastical cast of characters including Shakespeare, Mary Shelley and Isaac Newton.

Born in 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana, KURT VONNEGUTwas one of the few grandmasters of modern American letters. Called by the New York Times "the counterculture's novelist," his works guided a generation through the miasma of war and greed that was life in the U.S. in second half of the 20th century. After a stints as a soldier, anthropology PhD candidate, technical writer for General Electric, and salesman at a Saab dealership, Vonnegut rose to prominence with the publication of Cat's Cradle in 1963. Several modern classics, including Slaughterhouse-Five, soon followed. Never quite embraced by the stodgier arbiters of literary taste, Vonnegut was nonetheless beloved by millions of readers throughout the world. "Given who and what I am," he once said, "it has been presumptuous of me to write so well." Kurt Vonnegut died in New York in 2007.

"A smattering of wit, a splattering of satire, and a plop of colorful commentary. Not to mention Vonnegut's signature steely irony." -Providence Sunday Journal "[A] delightful fictional foray in which Vonnegut, courtesy of Dr. Death, toggles back and forth between life and afterlife, meditating on death by way of very short 'interviews' with the likes of Newton, Shakespeare, and a penitent Hitler." -Globe and Mail