Influential author Kurt Vonnegut has died at the age of 84 after suffering brain injuries in a fall in New York.
During a career lasting more than 50 years, he wrote the classic anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse Five, detailing his experiences of the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.
During a career lasting more than 50 years, he wrote the classic anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse Five, detailing his experiences of the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.
Here he is writing in 2005 from his A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America, published by Bloomsbury.
'I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country (the United States), have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.And still on the subject of books: our daily news sources, newspapers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books do we learn what's really going on.'
Vonnegut said he was often surprised to have lived for so long, having been a heavy smoker. He once joked: "I'm suing a cigarette company because on the package they promised to kill me, and yet here I am."
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