(born 1922) Writer whose continual mixture of broad American incisive satire and apocalyptic warning has made him a guru to generations of youths since the 1960s. Vonnegut’s novels mingle techniques and voices from memoir, science fiction and journalistic essays in books that range from imaginative universes to dialogues with the reader about the problems of a changing world. Slaughterhouse-5 (1969), which revolves around his own experiences of the bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, exemplifies this mixture. Vonnegut has also considered themes as diverse as religion, the end of the world (Cat’s Cradle, 1963) and politics (Slapstick, 1976).