The famous contemporary American writer Kurt Vonnegut, well known to Soviet readers from such works as “Slaughterhouse-Five”, “Cat’s Cradle”, “Breakfast of Champions”, etc., in his new novel, permeated with anti-war pathos, in a characteristic style His writing in a grotesque and satirical manner exposes the bourgeois-philistine environment, which at different times became fertile socio-psychological soil for militaristic psychosis. The novel calls for a responsible attitude towards the fate of the world.© 1982 by The Ramjac Corporation© Translation into Russian “Foreign Literature”, 1985© Preface by Raduga Publishing House, 1988