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Mother Night

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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May 21, 2021 Linda Martin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 2021, war, geo-new-york, geo-israel, satire, geo-germany

It has been years since I picked up a Kurt Vonnegut Jr. novel. I read the most popular ones back when I was a teenager in the 1960's. I listened to the audiobook version of Mother Night this week, and am positively impressed.

This story was unputdownable for me. It never lagged or bored me. Never. Not once. I cared about the main character and the narrative he wanted to commit to paper from his jail cell in Israel. There were some surprises in the last couple chapters.

The audiobook reader was c ...more

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Mar 26, 2025 Steve rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

I think this is the second complete Vonnegut book I've read. (The other one was Slaughterhouse-5, which I enjoyed.) There have been two or three other Vonnegut misfires that I've set aside. I just didn't him enough to care. Well, I may have to reconsider reading Kurt after reading "Mother Night." Or maybe, in this age of Trump, Vonnegut's dark eye and black humor has become even more relevant than ever. On surface, you wouldn't think so. Published in 1962, "Mother Night" tells the story of Howar I think this is the second complete Vonnegut book I've read. (The other one was Slaughterhouse-5, which I enjoyed.) There have been two or three other Vonnegut misfires that I've set aside. I just didn't him enough to care. Well, I may have to reconsider reading Kurt after reading "Mother Night." Or maybe, in this age of Trump, Vonnegut's dark eye and black humor has become even more relevant than ever. On surface, you wouldn't think so. Published in 1962, "Mother Night" tells the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr. (told in the first person via short chapters in a memoir of sorts), an American playwright who stays in Nazi Germany, after marrying the love of his life, Helga. He becomes a radio propagandist for the Nazis (much like Lord Haw-Haw), but he's also a spy for the Americans. His broadcasts are filled with information, which are cloaked by the usual Nazi hate-trash. As the war is ending he is captured by the Americans, but before he his hanged, is rescued by his Spy Master and whisked off to New York.

Jump forward 15 years and we find Campbell living pretty anonymously in a New York attic. He lives a simple dead-in-life existence until he is exposed by a neighbor (and Soviet agent). Things go pretty insane and off-the-tracks from here on (in a controlled sort of Vonnegut way). For some reason I was reminded of a demented Dylan song. Anyway, American Nazis, fascists, and right wingers seek him out due to Howard's fame (or infamy). Helga reappears (or maybe not), and vengeance seekers are also out Howard's blood. Eventually Howard finds himself in an Israeli jail awaiting trial. (Eichman is right down the hall.) This isn't a reveal since you know Howard is in jail in the first chapter. The novel does not follow a linear path. At the end Howard is faced with a choice in an utterly insane world. How the reader feels about that choice will probably vary with the reader, but it will resonate. "Mother Night" is black comedy at its blackest. But it's also a deeply moral book and an ongoing indictment of the modern predicament. ...more

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