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Old 07-18-2016, 07:57 PM   #1811
GtrsRGr8
Grand Sorcerer
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Posts: 7,334
Karma: 27815322
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Southeastern U.S., ya'll
Device: Kindle; Kindle (10.1.1) for PC; Kindle Cloud Reader
Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night--$25.95 at Audible; $3.98 as a Whispersync Deal!

The Nick Nolte movie of 1996, of the same title, was based on this book.

Title: Mother Night.
Genre: Fiction (Satire).
Author(s): Kurt Vonnegut.
Price: $3.98 ($1.99 ebook (marked down) + $1.99 Whispersync audio).
Regular Price of Audio, by Itself, at Audible: $25.95.
Ebook Rating/Number of Reviews: 4.6 stars/292 reviews (Amazon).
Audio Rating/Number of Ratings: 4.2/641 ratings.
Pages/Audio Length: 290/6 hours and 7 minutes.
Narrator(s): Victor Bevine.
Audible URL: http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Mo...ok/B002V57S2U/.
Amazon URL (you can get the whole Whispersync deal here): https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Night-.../dp/B005IHWB5C.
Comments:
Book Description (Amazon):
Best known now by the 1996 Nick Nolte film of the same title, Mother Night (1961) is a dazzling narrative of false, shifting identity. The story tells of the odyssey of Howard Campbell, Jr., the book's protagonist, and is a paradigm of shifting loyalties, ambiguous commitment, and tales of personal compromise. Campbell is an American emigre in Germany at the time of Hitler's ascension; he is married to a German, his relations with the Nazi regime are excellent, and he agrees to spy for them and to become a broadcaster for the regime; but then, increasingly disaffected, Campbell becomes a double agent, then perhaps a triple agent, sending coded messages to the Allies.

After the War, he is tried for war crimes but is exonerated. The novel is written in memoir format from the point of view of the exiled Campbell, who, indifferent to outcome, plots suicide.

Here is a moral tale without a moral, or perhaps, according to Vonnegut, a tale with several morals. Vonnegut, a science fiction writer in his early career, knew the science fiction community very well, and it is more or less accepted that the conflicted and indecipherable Howard Campbell is modeled upon John W. Campbell, Jr. (1910-1971), the great editor of Astounding and Analog whose decades long rightward drift led him to endorse George Wallace in 1968.
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