Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. But his real problem is not the enemy-it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. Named one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. One of the funniest books ever written, Joseph Hellers masterpiece. In recent years it has been named to “best novels” lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: 9780679437222 : Books Named one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. Heller satirizes among other matters: militarism, red tape, bureaucracy, nationalism, patriotism, discipline, ambition, loyalty, medicine, psychiatry, money, big business, high finance, sex, religion, mankind and God.Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest-and most celebrated-books of all time.

Joseph Heller’s key sentence is this: ‘Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.’ His story is a satirical denunciation of war and of mankind that glorifies war and wages war cruelly, stupidly, selfishly.

One can relish his delirious dialogue and his ludicrous situations while recognizing that they reflect a basic range and disgust. And perhaps ‘enjoy’ is not quite the right word for anyone’s reaction to Mr Heller’s imaginative inventions. Its humor, I think, is essentially masculine. “ Catch-22 is a funny book-vulgarly, bitterly, savagely funny. Those who are interested may be reminded of the Voltaire who wrote Candide and of the Kafka who wrote The Trial. Heller’s story rises above mere realism and soars into the stratosphere of satire, grotesque exaggeration, fantasy, farce and sheer lunacy. In any case, it is one of the most startling first novels of the year and it may make its author famous … Catch-22 is realistic in its powerful accounts of bombing missions with men screaming and dying and planes crashing. Wildly original, brilliantly comic, brutally gruesome, it is a dazzling performance that will probably outrage nearly as many readers as it delights. But there can be no doubt that it is the strangest novel yet written about the United States Air Force in World War II.

It is not even a good novel by conventional standards. “ Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, is not an entirely successful novel. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.

Catch 22 paperback