Product Description

At the heart of Joseph Heller's bestselling novel, first published in 1961, is a satirical indicement of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to survive it. It is a tale of the dangerously sane Captain Yossarian, who spends his time in Italy plotting to survive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #670 in Books
• Published on: 1994-10-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Financial Times
Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny, and fantastically unique.

Observer
The greatest satirical work in the English language since EREHWON

Chicago Times
An apocalyptic masterpiece

Customer Reviews

One of three
Believe it or not, my parents recommended this book to me. All I can say is, for once they were right. I've only read two other books that so blew me away in their conception and execution and those were "Clockwork Orange" and "Barring Some Unforeseen Accident" by McCrae. But even those can't compare to "Catch 22. What a wild ride this well crafted book is. To say it's thought-provoking is a cliche, but there it is. Sort of like "1984" probably was before 1984. Some have likened this to MASH and the Korean war, and I can see those similarities, but the book is really meant to be read on a much broader level; a level of humanity in general and not one specific event or time period. The book is funny and challenging, but that seems to me to be what one would be looking for in a great novel. There's reason this book has been around for eons--it's simply a great novel that holds up to the test of time.

The ultimate exploration of the human condition
On the surface, Catch-22 is a fine novel about the U.S Army Air Force in Europe during the 1939-45 war. You do not have to scratch the surface hard to find a classic, timeless novel of the fine line between sanity and total madness. Is Yossarian, the 'hero', totally sane, or utterly, irredeemably insane? You tell me. Catch-22 is unique in its ability to thrust confusion, frustration, despair, insanity, death and plain old fashioned misery in waves - and yet repeatedly surprise you with its sidesplitting humour. When you laugh, you are not laughing at Heller's finely crafted characters, with all their idiosyncrasies, but at yourself, your friends and relatives. Because Heller's situations mirror the daily stupidities that we all put up with, laugh about and cry about. Reading Catch-22 is like sitting through the main feature a second time - you know exactly what will happen next; you know that nothing can change it. You cannot help hoping that it won't be so bad. But, of course, it's worse.

Uniquely itself and somewhat brilliant
I've read quite a large number of mid 20th Century books which are now referred to as classics and just about all of them disappointed in some way or other. This one never did.

Some have said that the characters in Catch-22 are both impossible and unbelievable. Whilst the way in which the characters fit together to form the story may seem somewhat unlikely I never found that any individual character became completely unbelievable. Having said that the characters are believable I can also say that in most ways the entire book is, I constantly thought, "it couldn't happen, could it?", and was quite worried that it probably could. To find out what could or could not you would have to read the book, I don't think any description (and certainly not mine) could adequately convey it.

As a whole I can't believe that nobody ever recommended that I read this novel, I would recommend that everybody who can does.