Who recommends it
- The Best Dark Comedy BooksReading list
“Catch-22” by Joseph Heller is a satirical masterpiece that has stood the test of time as one of the funniest and most celebrated books of all time. This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates this literary gem, with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley, and a wealth of critical essays and reviews by literary…
- Stephen WaltInterview
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. It’s funny, fantastic, and horrifying, and it captures the insanity of war as effectively as any real-life battlefield memoir. It also teaches you not to trust authority, which is an important life lesson. I read it over and over in junior high and high school. I didn’t understand a lot of…
- Lawrence KraussInterview
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I read it perhaps 5 times while I was growing up. It poignantly reminded me of the absurdity of life, and the importance of resisting authority. At the same time, it taught me as a writer, and a public speaker, of the importance of the use of odd juxtaposition in order to throw readers or…
- Mark ElliottInterview
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Why? I watch ‘on-demand’ interviews from the London Weekend Television series the South Bank Show, hosted by Melvin Bragg, which ran from 1978 to 2010. It’s an excellent perspective on contemporary arts culture, which is multidimensional and very interesting indeed. Joseph Heller was the…
- Annie DukeInterview
So many. I haven’t really answered much about books I read as a teenager and in college (other than Animal Farm). Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.
- Gary SirakInterview
16 Years old – Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. It is funny and will allow you to look at the world in a different way.
- Phil WangInterview
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever read. The only book that’s made me cry with laughter, the only book that has forced me to put it down so I could get my breath back.
- Lawrence GrobelInterview
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: Also, when I was 15 and working a summer job at a pharmaceutical warehouse. Dismal, backbreaking work, but spent lunch time and coffee break reading this. Lifted my spirits. Made me laugh. At least through most of it. Also made me see the folly of war, which influenced me when I became…
- David PapineauInterview
I don’t have any sort of personal bible, but I might as well mention Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth here. I was a bit young and not English enough for the 1950s angry young men to speak directly to me, but Heller and Roth showed me and my friends the absurdity of many conventional…
- Rolf PottsInterview
Though I read more books each year now than in most previous phases in my adult life, the most affecting books from my life are the ones I read in my late teens and early twenties. These are the books I tend to go back to again and again. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck is not, for many readers, at the top of the…
- Simon HøgsbergInterview
Lying next to the bed on the windowsill is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Ten pages have been read, the whole story is dark territory so far. Lying on another windowsill is The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq.
- Benjamin MurphyInterview
Either Something Happened by Joseph Heller or Herzog by Saul Bellow. Something Happened is about the malaise of middle-aged middle-American life, and is far superior to Catch-22. Heller is definitely famous for the wrong book. Bellow is another absolute hero.
Often recommended alongside
The Bible
The Catcher in the Rye
1984
Crime and Punishment
LolitaMore books by Joseph Heller our guests recommend
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases made through links on this page.