CATCH 22

Front Cover
HoKaTa - 464 pages

 Catch-22 is a satirical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II from 1942 to 1944. It is frequently cited as one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century.[2] It uses a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient narration, describing events from the points of view of different characters. The separate storylines are out of sequence so that the timeline develops along with the plot.


The novel follows Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy. The novel looks into the experiences of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp. It focuses on their attempts to keep their sanity in order to fulfill their service requirements so that they may return home.

The phrase "Catch-22" has entered the English language, referring to a type of unsolvable logic puzzle.

About the author

 Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn in 1923. In 1961, he published Catch-22, which became a bestseller and, in 1970, a film. He went on to write such novels as Good as Gold, God Knows, Picture This, Closing Time (the sequel to Catch-22), and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. Heller died in December 1999.

Christopher Buckley is the pen name of Christopher Buckley. He divides his time between the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and the koi pond, which serves asa sushi bar for the benefit of herons. When not cursing herons, he plants expensive bulbs for the winter nourishment of the abundant local squirrelpopulation. His next book isGame of Drones, a candid and sure-to-be-controversial account of his experiences deploying miniature unmanned aerial vehicles in his yard “for purposes of deterrence and, to be honest, revenge.”

Bibliographic information