Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade by Kurt Vonnegut. Short summary

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Billy Pilgrim, having survived captivity, the bombing of Dresden, and a plane crash, suffers a mental breakdown. He relives the difficult moments of his past and future life by traveling back in time.

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In the mid-1970s, writer Jonsen travels to Dresden and visits slaughterhouse number five, where prisoners of war were held. The author considers modern wars to be the child crusades of the 13th century, when thousands of children were tricked into slavery or killed. He writes a book about Billy Pilgrim.

The hero survives a plane crash and recounts the aliens who abducted him, the simultaneous existence of different time periods. The first time Billy emerges from time at the front in 1945. The aliens who abducted him do not attach importance to death and teach the earthling how to move through time moments. Pilgrim already knows when and how he will die. He has been to both his past and future lives.

A daughter takes her father home from the clinic. He sneaks away from his nurse. He manages to get on the radio, but is mistaken for a lunatic. Billy is back in ruined Dresden. American prisoners are sent to clean up the rubble and retrieve the bodies. Spring has come. The war is over.