Introduction

Catch-22, published in 1961, is probably the best-known and most widely read novel of World War II. Its author, Joseph Heller, saw combat as an American bombardier in the last year of the war, but Catch-22 is unlike the more conventional novels of World War II that preceded it. It mixes scenes of outlandish, over-the-top satire with scenes that depict the mortal terror and horrific violence of combat. Reading Catch-22 can be both entertaining and disturbing, as the narrative veers from wild slapstick to sheer terror and back again in just a few paragraphs. It is a wild, surreal, hilarious, and often unsettling evocation of the absurdity and violence of war.

Catch-22 follows the experiences of Captain Yossarian, a bombardier in the Mediterranean theater of World War II in 1944, who flies missions from the island of Pianosa over targets in...