This collection of Vonneguts letters is the autobiography he never wrote from the letter he posted home upon being freed from a German POW camp, to notes of advice to his children: Dont let anybody tell you that smoking and boozing are bad for you. Here I am fifty-five years old, and I never felt better in my life. Peppered with insights, one-liners and missives to the likes of Norman Mailer, Gunter Grass and Bernard Malamud, Vonnegut is funny, wise and modest. As he himself said: I am an American fadof a slightly higher order than the hula hoop.

Like Vonneguts books, his letters make you think, they make you outraged and they make you laugh. Written over a sixty-year period, and never published before, these letters are alive with the unique point of view that made Vonnegut one of the most original writers in American fiction.

Kurt Vonnegutwas born in Indianapolis in 1922 and studied biochemistry at Cornell University. During the Second World War he served in Europe and, as a prisoner of was in Germany, witnessed the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers, an experience which inspired his classic novelSlaughterhouse-Five. He is the author of thirteen other novels, three collections of stories and five non-fiction books. Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007.

Dan Wakefieldfirst befriended Kurt Vonnegut in 1963. Like Vonnegut, he was born and raised in Indianapolis. He is a novelist and screenwriter whose books include the bestsellingGoing All the Wayand the memoirNew York in the Fifties.