“Catch-22” is a satirical novel by American author Joseph Heller, the son of poor Jewish parents. Heller wanted to be a writer from an early age. His experiences as a bombardier during World War II inspired Catch-22. While sitting at home one morning in 1953, Heller thought of the lines, "It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, fell madly in love with him." Within the next day, he began to envision the story, invented the characters, the plot, and the tone that the story would eventually take. Within a week, he had finished the first chapter and sent it to his agent. For Heller, delineating the foolishness of war - and perhaps of bureaucracies more generally - becomes an ecstatic project. Madness runs through every exchange; absurdity informs every character. The Catch-22 itself is bureaucratic idiocy so sublime it leaves you staring out the window with wonder. The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. The novel looks into the experiences of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp, who attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their service requirements so that they may return home. The power of Catch-22 is the way in which it plunges into that emptiness at the end of the novel when the source of its comedy is finally revealed. Enjoy free online English audiobook “Catch-22”, breathtaking and one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century.
