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Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut — book cover
Fiction, American Fiction, World Literature, Fiction Subjects, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Galapagos

by Kurt Vonnegut
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Overview

Galápagos takes the reader back one million years, to A.D. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galápagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, and totally different human race. In this inimitable novel, America’s master satirist looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry–and all that is worth saving.

Synopsis

A small group of apocalypse survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave new human race. "Vonnegut is a post-modern Mark Train. . . . Galapagos is a madcap genealogical adventure".--New York Times Book Review.

The New York Times - Lorrie Moore

Although certainly the novel has something to do with the giant crush America has on celebrity, the famous people never really do make it into the story, and what we end up with is a madcap genealogical adventure - a blend of the Old Testament, the Latin American novel and a lot of cut-up comic books - employing a cast of lesser-knowns that includes a schoolteacher named Mary Hepburn, an Ecuadorean sea captain named von Kleist, a former male prostitute named James Wait (whose skin color is ''like the crust on a pie in a cheap cafeteria''), a dog named Kazakh (who, ''thanks to surgery and training, had virtually no personality''), plus a narrator who turns out to be none other than the son of Kilgore Trout, that science fiction hack from Mr. Vonnegut's earlier books.

About the Author, Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut was forever established in the literary pantheon and on the school syllabus with the publication of his brilliant antiwar novel Slaughterhouse-Five, but he endured as a purveyor of mind-warping, surreal fiction that just so happened to be funny.

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Editorials

Lorrie Moore

Although certainly the novel has something to do with the giant crush America has on celebrity, the famous people never really do make it into the story, and what we end up with is a madcap genealogical adventure - a blend of the Old Testament, the Latin American novel and a lot of cut-up comic books - employing a cast of lesser-knowns that includes a schoolteacher named Mary Hepburn, an Ecuadorean sea captain named von Kleist, a former male prostitute named James Wait (whose skin color is ''like the crust on a pie in a cheap cafeteria''), a dog named Kazakh (who, ''thanks to surgery and training, had virtually no personality''), plus a narrator who turns out to be none other than the son of Kilgore Trout, that science fiction hack from Mr. Vonnegut's earlier books.
— The New York Times

Library Journal

For many Vonnegut fans, Galapagos will be a disappointment. The story is set ``one million years ago, back in 1986 A.D.'' and concerns the maiden voyage of the Bahia de Darwin to the Galapa gos Islands. The narrator is a ghost, and the main characters are those involved with the cruise. As the narrative devel ops, we learn that people have evolved from having ``big brains'' that always get them in trouble, to creatures with flippersbut they keep getting eaten by sharks. The narration jumps back and forth between past and future, so that there is no real sense of what life is like in the ``present'' of the story, and it is difficult to grasp what these new hu mans are really like. Vonnegut's usual stylistic devices just don't work here. Buy for demand. Susan Avallone, ``Library Journal''

School Library Journal

YA Leon Trout, the ghost of a decapitated shipbuilder, narrates the humorous, ironic and sometimes carping decline of the human race, as seen through the eyes and minds of the survivors of a doomed cruise to the Galapagos Islands. Vonnegut's cast of unlikely Adams and Eves setting out in a Noah's ark includes Mary Hepburn, an American biology teacher and recent widow; Zenji Hiroguchi, a Japanese computer genius (who does not make it to the ship, although his language-translating and quotation-spouting computer does); his wife, Hisako, carrying radiated genes from the atomic bombs; James Wait, who has made a fortune marrying elderly women; and Captain Aolph von Kleist. Also included: six orphaned girls of the Kana-bono cannibal tribe, who will become the founding mothers of the fisherfolk after bacteria render all other women infertile. Serious fans of Vonnegut's wry and ribald prose will welcome this tale of the devolution of superbrained humans into gentle swimmers with small brains, but others may find this Darwinian survival tale too packed with ecological and sociological details that trap the story line in a series of literary devices, albeit very clever ones. Mary T. Gerrity, Queen Anne School, Upper Marlboro, Md.

Book Details

Published
January 1, 1999
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Pages
336
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780385333870

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