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Catch-22
Catch-22
Jun 17, 2025 8:00 AM

Author:Joseph Heller,Howard Jacobson

Catch-22

**AS SEEN ON BBC TWO'S BETWEEN THE COVERS**

Discover Joseph Heller's hilarious and tragic satire on military madness, and the tale of one man's efforts to survive it.

It's the closing months of World War II and Yossarian has never been closer to death. Stationed in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, each flight mission introduces him to thousands of people determined to kill him.

But the enemy above is not Yossarian's problem - it is his own army intent on keeping him airborne, and the maddening 'Catch-22' that allows for no possibility of escape.

'The greatest satirical work in the English language' Observer

Reviews

Wildly original, brutally gruesome, a dazzling performance that will outrage as many readers as it delights. Vulgarly, bitterly funny, it will not be forgotten by those who can take it

—— New York Times

Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny and fantastically unique. No one has ever written a book like this

—— Financial Times

Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny, and fantastically unique. No one has ever written a book like this

—— Financial Times

An apocalyptic masterpiece

—— Chicago Times

It is the Rock and Roll of novels

—— Norman Mailer

Catch-22 is the only war novel I've ever read that makes any sense

—— Harper Lee

Once you "get it" it is a gripping and devastating insight into the pointlessness and bureaucracy of war and its consequences

—— The Times

The most devastating satire ever written about the lunacy of war and military bureaucracy

—— Antony Beevor

Unsurpassed by any adventure story in recent years

—— Alistair MacLean, author of The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare

A masterful depiction of the human cost of war...reveals how even in the worst of horrors, and against all the odds, love can survive. McMenamin writes with a passionate intensity.

—— David Park

Set during WW1 and the Irish Civil War, turning on two pivotal stories in Ireland's history -- the foundation of the State, and the Protestant memory of WW1 - the novel follows the story of a brutal IRA man, who now needs the help of his childhood sweetheart, and sister of his dead friend, to cross the border to safety.

—— Irish Times

Paris Echo is an enjoyable and highly readable novel. Faulks has an easy-going style and he draws you seemingly without effort into the world he creates. He has a knowing humour too…In part the novel is a love letter to Paris, but it is also the latest product of Faulk’s long-standing and fascinating engagement with the devastating events of the 20th century.

—— Literary Review

This intelligent, moving, often disturbing novel is also really a love letter to Paris – and, indeed, to France

—— i paper

Faulks excels at creating well-rounded characters.

—— Good Housekeeping

An intriguing guide to the many layers of Parisien life.

—— Anthony Gardner , Mail on Sunday

Master storytelling... [An] intriguing and moving story that shows how the future is shaped by the past.

—— Women & Home

Immersive

—— The Spectator

A lovely novel by a writer who lives and breathes France

—— Saga Magazine

Another terrific, intelligent read from Faulks

—— Reader's Digest

A gripping book that I devoured in about three days; this dark book reminds us of the history that lurks around every street corner

—— Claudia Jacobs , Palatinate

Gaël Faye makes us smile, despite the seriousness of his words

—— Médiapart

What is autobiographical, and what imagined? In the end it doesn’t matter, when he Gaël Faye gives life to the lost land of his childhood, with poetry and modesty

—— Agence France Presse Mondiales

Small Country is a stirring and graceful tale of stolen innocence and fragmented identity. Hopeful, raw and deeply human, it is a modern classic in the making.

—— France Today

An excellent novel, a model of restraint and quiet literary sophistication

—— The Times

Cherry, Nico Walker’s outstanding debut, is a hard-hitting, ghoulishly funny novel about drug addiction, war and bank robbery.

—— Washington Post

Heartbreaking, unadorned, radically absent of pretense, Cherry is the debut novel America needs now, a letter from the frontlines of opioid addiction and, almost subliminally, a war story.

—— Lea Carpenter, author of Eleven Days and Red, White, Blue

Nico Walker’s Cherry is a wrenching, clear-eyed stare-down into the abyss of war, addiction and crime, a dark tumble into scumbaggery, but it’s also deeply humane and truly funny. That is one of the reasons I love it so much: it makes you laugh and ache at the same time, in the manner of the great Denis Johnson.

—— Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will

One of the most exciting new American novelists.

—— Men's Journal

Heavily indebted to the profane blood, guts, bullets, and opiate-strewn absurdities dreamed up by Thomas McGuane, Larry Brown, and Barry Hannah, Cherry tells a story that feels infinitely more real, and undeniably tougher than the rest.

—— A.V. Club

A bruising dispatch from the frontline of the American opioid crisis… the final quarter [of Cherry] rushes by in a cold sweat.

—— Anthony Cummins , Daily Mail

[An] incendiary debut… Nico Walker writes with real rhythm, exhibiting a poet’s discrimination about adjectival choice and the relative length of clauses. It is a rare and remarkable achievement to turn such suffering into a novel of such finely calibrated beauty.

—— Lucian Robinson , Times Literary Supplement

A gritty, addictive read.

—— Chloe Cherry , Face

I think everyone should read it – it is so horrific.

—— Kirsty Wark , Lady

A well-received return to form

—— Charlotte Heathcote , Daily Express

Astonishingly bold novel… [It] is Amis’s best work in years

—— Mail on Sunday

Amis’s best work since Money

—— Richard Susskind , The Times
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