庫爾特•馮內古特（Kurt Vonnegut，1922—2007）

20 世紀美國最重要、最有影響的黑色幽默文學代錶作傢。代錶作有《貓的搖籃》、《五號屠場》、《冠軍早餐》、《時震》、《囚鳥》等。他的作品抓住瞭他處身時代的情緒，並激發瞭一代人的想象。

馮內古特是齣生在美國的猶太人，1940年考取康奈爾大學，主修化學。1944年珍珠港事件爆發，主張反戰的他誌願參軍，遠赴歐洲戰場。1945年遭德軍俘虜，被囚禁在德纍斯頓戰俘營。馮內古特的文學創作，不少靈感正是來自於在戰俘營的經曆。戰後馮內古特在芝加哥大學獲得人類學碩士學位，後在哈佛大學任教。他從50年代起開始發錶短篇小說，60年代起開始齣版長篇。晚年的馮內古特在曼哈頓和紐約長島的田園裏頤養天年。2007 年3月在傢中樓梯上不慎摔倒，同年4 月11 日，在曼哈頓逝世。

Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and funny portrait of life in post--World War II America-a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Here are tales both cautionary and hopeful, each brimming with Vonnegut's trademark humor and profound humanism. A family learns the downside of confiding their deepest secrets into a magical invention. A man finds himself in a Kafkaesque world of trouble after he runs afoul of the shady underworld boss who calls the shots in an upstate New York town. A quack psychiatrist turned "murder counselor" concocts a novel new outlet for his paranoid patients. While these stories reflect the anxieties of the postwar era that Vonnegut was so adept at capturing- and provide insight into the development of his early style-collectively, they have a timeless quality that makes them just as relevant today as when they were written. It's impossible to imagine any of these pieces flowing from the pen of another writer; each in its own way is unmistakably, quintessentially Vonnegut. Featuring a Foreword by author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit and illustrated with Vonnegut' s characteristically insouciant line drawings, Look at the Birdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought his unique voice had been stilled forever-and serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius. Read "Hello, Red" and "The Petrified Ants," two of the stories from the collection, as single-story e-books before Look at the Birdie goes on sale. Available wherever e-books are sold.