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Kurt Vonnegut: Letters
Kurt Vonnegut: Letters
Jan 13, 2026 9:52 AM

Author:Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut: Letters

This collection of Vonnegut’s letters is the autobiography he never wrote – from the letter he posted home upon being freed from a German POW camp, to notes of advice to his children: ‘Don’t let anybody tell you that smoking and boozing are bad for you. Here I am fifty-five years old, and I never felt better in my life’. Peppered with insights, one-liners and missives to the likes of Norman Mailer, Gunter Grass and Bernard Malamud, Vonnegut is funny, wise and modest. As he himself said: ‘I am an American fad—of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop’.

Like Vonnegut’s books, his letters make you think, they make you outraged and they make you laugh. Written over a sixty-year period, and never published before, these letters are alive with the unique point of view that made Vonnegut one of the most original writers in American fiction.

Reviews

The collected letters of Kurt Vonnegut include some remarkable examples of epistolary eloquence… it is the tender letters to his youngest daughter, Nanette, that are the jewel of this collection

—— Jane Shilling , Sunday Telegraph Seven

One closes this volume...full of gratitude for Dan Wakefield...the editor of this labour of love that gives us one more reason to love Kurt Vonnegut

—— John Sutherland , The Times

This collection is perhaps the best insight into the everyday needles of a prolific author you could hope to read

—— Ed Caesar , Sunday Times

Splendidly assembled and edited by Dan Wakefield . . . [Vonnegut’s] familiar, funny, cranky, acute voice . . . is chronicling his life in real time.

—— New York Times Book Review

Droll and self-deprecating letters offer intriguing insights into Vonnegut’s life

—— Sunday Times

This miraculous volume of selected letters provides a moving and revelatory portrait of the famed author of Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle. . . . Fans will find the collection as spellbinding as Vonnegut’s best novels, and casual readers will discover letters as splendid in their own way as those of Keats.

—— Publisher's Weekly

A laughing prophet of doom

—— New York Times

Unimitative and inimitable social satirist

—— Harper's

A satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion, a cynic who wants to believe

—— Jay McInerney

Splendidly assembled and edited

—— Kurt Andersen , Scotsman

Unique

—— Doris Lessing

Kurt Vonnegut never regarded himself as a great writer. But he did possess that undervalued gift of charm, of sociability. There are authors we admire or envy, but there are just a few we really, really love, and Vonnegut is one of them.

—— Washington Times

[Reveals] Vonnegut’s passions, annoyances, loves, losses, mind and heart . . . The letters stand alone—and stand tall, indeed. . . . Vonnegut’s most human of hearts beats on every page

—— Kirkus Reviews

A well-rounded collection of letters

—— James Campbell , Guardian

[The letters] have a directness and a consistency, a scruffy but ensnaring humanity… Kurt seems by turns kind, engaged, imaginative, witty, self-deprecating (“I write with a big black crayon… grasped in a grubby, kindergarten fist,”) and – on various fronts – courageous

—— Keith Miller , Daily Telegraph

Crisply edited... There was something fundamentally goodhearted about Vonnegut. For all his gloom and cantankerousness, he never entirely lost his faith in human nature.

—— John Preston , Spectator

The fights are described in glorious visceral detail but this unconventional love story is just about the ducks and dives as much as it is about the hits and wins. Whitwham's East Side Story packs a punch, and is a knockout debut her family could only be proud of

—— UK Press Syndication

Here is a book that deals with its milieu head-on, and doesn't shrink from demonstrating that the ill-health and trauma experienced in these communities is genuine... This is a book that is truly written from within, and is therefore a powerful antidote to the snobbery infecting much of the clamour around how a large section of society is portrayed

—— CultureCompass

Impressive… Gives voice to the furious, restrained beauty inherent in rigid masculinity… Whitwham certainly packs a punch

—— Francesca Laidlaw , Upcoming

A compelling debut novel which beautifully explores the heart, physicality and working-class origins of boxing in East London

—— Kerry Hudson , Huffington Post UK
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