Kurt Vonnegut

The ghost of a decapitated shipbuilder wryly observes the decline of the human race as reflected by a group of shipwreck survivors, including a biology teacher, a bomb-radiated wife of a Japanese computer genius, and a gold digger, a motley band whose fates are shaped by infertility and a local tribe of cannibals. Reissue.

A Novel

Galápagos

Patrick Book

Does an incredible job of reversing Vonnegut's structural tendencies on the way to telling an impossibly personal story about the fate of literally the entire human race. Audacious, and feels very exploratory for him until you get to the second "book," when everything falls into place.

Ryan Mateyk

Observed by a ghost of the Vietnam War for one million years, the descendants of survivors of a cruise to the Galapagos Archipielago prove Darwin's Theory of Evolution

Galapagos

Laura Mauler

I wanted to like this book, but it just moved soooo sloooow. I made it about a third of the way through, and they are still in the damn hotel! Most of it is just forshadowing, either of what will happen to these specific people or of what will happen to the human race a million years in the future.

about the evolutionary disadvantages and faux pas of our blundering big brains

Rebecca Lum

Dweedle 

A fun romp around the idea that human brains are an evolutionary disadvantage. Enough here to keep you thinking but light enough to move through quickly. Not many memorable characters but still an enlightening read

Gabe Cortez

Katarína Fialová

It took me some time to get through this book, since I found it a bit chaotic, but after few pages I just fell in love with it. With Vonnegut´s sense of humor in unexpected situations, a bit of sci-fi, evolutionary biology and the end of humanity caused by greed and stupidity, it just all made sense.

Krista M.

Funny-Irreverent-Dark-Winding
This was my first book by this author and I really liked it al lot. I found it to e a funny and convoluted story. I think the slow-pace at which the events of the story were progressed was to simulate the millions of years the narrator has experienced. My only concern was that I was left wondering how no one ever found them? Did the world just give up flying planes in the area, no ships? Was there some unnamed world ending disaster that left them the only inhabitants alive? I think it was interesting to look at how humans have used their 'big brain' to create an environment for which they are no longer fit and which they can never become fit in. 



Fred Rocha

No book KV writes is other than excellent.

Michael Hessling

Ridiculous... in a good way. But got a little old after a while.

Lexie 

Long, long ago, as he researched into the origin of species, Charles Darwin had been inspired by the creatures of the Galapagos. Now, a million years on, the new inhabitants of the islands - the human survivors of the 'Nature Cruise of the Century' - have quietly evolved into sleek, furry creatures with flippers, and small brains. All other forms of humankind have ceased to exist, finally made redundant by their own inventions. All that survives of their Big-Brain Culture is contained in Mandarax, a tiny electronic marvel which can recall any one of twenty thousand popular quotations from world literature, as well as translate among a thousand languages. Unfortunately Mandarax doesn't understand Kanka-Bono, the language of the cannibals who have arrived to 'look after' the new humanity. "Galapagos is Vonnegut's funniest and maddest book in years." tIME OUt "Galapagos is clever, extremely entertaining, cordially balancing on the knife edge of blackness and never falling off." GUARDIAN "Vonnegut's best novel since Slaughterhouse 5" MARtIN AMIS, Observer

Galápagos A Novel

Reviews