While Mortals Sleep

While Mortals Sleep by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

In his touching preface, writer Dave Eggars refers to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. as a "hippie Mark Twain". Never has Vonnegut's appeal been described so accurately. While Mortals Sleep features unpublished, short fiction pieces by the Slaughterhouse- Five, Breakfast of Champions and Cats Cradle author. This is the second posthumously released collection (the first being Look At the Birdie) and it focuses solely on the author's early work before receiving literary notoriety. In these stories, we get a preview of themes and tones that will exist later in his most famous writings: mainly bizarro science fiction and his select brand of acerbic wit and humor (this is where we mostly relate his Twain influence).

In these rich stories, we encounter the mother and widow of a fallen World War II soldier, a restless newspaper man who has no time for Christmas and a scientist who falls in love with a talking refrigerator he's modeled after his ex-wife. These tales from the young author manage to succeed as classic Vonnegut.