Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens Of Titan

This novel tells the story of Malachi Constant, hardly the captain of his own fate, but an unwilling tool of fate. More precisely, as we learn, the novel is the story of an alien stranded on Titan, a moon of Saturn, who needs a spare part for his broken space ship. All of human history turns out to have been generated by a distant civilization for the sole purpose of getting Salo, as our alien is known, his missing part. Vonnegut uses farce in telling Malachi's story in order to undercut traditional understandings of God, religion, and the notion that humanity is at the center of the divine narrative. The Sirens of Titan is an outrageous romp through space, time, and morality, and a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life only Kurt Vonnegut had the courage to tell. This book shows Vonnegut's gift for language, his outrageous sense of humor, and his bleak view of existence. It definitely belongs on any list of first-rate American novels with which one should be familiar.