Joseph Heller is best known for Catch-22, a satirical war novel set among American airmen stationed on a Mediterranean island during the Second World War. The story follows bombardier Yossarian, who wants to survive long enough to go home but is trapped by military rules that treat his desire for self-preservation as evidence that he is sane enough to keep flying missions. The novel moves out of chronological order and repeatedly revisits the same events from different angles, turning bureaucracy, promotion and official language into sources of absurdity. Heller returned to some of the characters decades later in Closing Time, while Something Happened shifts his dark comedy to corporate and family life. Catch-22 remains Heller's defining book: war satire, black comedy and bureaucratic absurdity are inseparable from its deliberately circular structure and repeated scenes. Read more Less
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