Catch-22: As recommended on BBC2’s Between the Covers: xiii (Vintage classics)

by Howard Jacobson (Introduction), Joseph Heller (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $4.32

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HOWARD JACOBSON Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never even met keep trying to kill him. Joseph Heller's bestselling novel is a hilarious and tragic satire on military madness, and the tale of one man's efforts to survive it.

• Used

  Paperback
  1969

  $5.83

• New

  paperback
  

  $12.16

  With an introduction by Howard Jacobson. Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage. Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never even met keep trying to kill him. Joseph Heller's bestselling novel is a hilarious and tragic satire on military madness, and the tale of one man's efforts to survive it.

• New

  Hardcover
  1995

  $16.85

  A burlesque epic in the tradition of The Good Soldier Schweik, Catch-22 exposes the absurdity of war by applying its own demented logic to America's involvement in Korea. The 'catch' is that soldiers have to claim to be mad in order to get out of fighting - but being capable of making such a claim automatically proves them sane. With a cast of magnificently larger-than-life characters who are rushed along at a breathless pace, for once this really is a novel it's hard to put down. Catch-22 was made into a film.