Editions

Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099529125

  • Length: 544  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 34mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 373g

  • RRP: £9.99

Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition

Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage.

Set in the closing months of World War II, this is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. 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. If Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn't have to; but if he doesn't want to he must be sane and has to. That's some catch...

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099529125

  • Length: 544  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 34mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 373g

  • RRP: £9.99

Reviews

  • Never has a book been laughed and wept over so many times

    Guardian

  • To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past fifty years. Catch-22 is one

    Stephen King

  • Catch-22 is the only war novel I've ever read that makes any sense

    Harper Lee

  • The war novel to end all war novels

    Independent

  • Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny and fantastically unique. No one has ever written a book like this

    Financial Times

More from this Author

About the Author

Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller was born in 1923 in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a bombardier in the Second World War and then attended New York University and Columbia University and then Oxford, the last on a Fullbright scholarship. He then taught for two years at Pennsylvania State University, before returning to New York, where he began a successful career in the advertising departments of Time, Look and McCall's magazines. It was during this time that he had the idea for Catch-22. Working on the novel in spare moments and evenings at home, it took him eight years to complete and was first published in 1961. His second novel, Something Happened was published in 1974, Good As Gold in 1979 and Closing Time in 1994. He is also the author of the play We Bombed in New Haven.

Joseph Heller

Read more

/content/dam/prh/articles/adults/2020/october/Main-Tom-Maschler-1.jpg

Features

‘The King of British publishing’: Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes and more pay tribute to Tom Maschler

The world of books would look very different without Tom Maschler, who died this week. His authors and former colleagues remember him.

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies on this site to enable certain parts of the site to function and to collect information about your use of the site so that we can improve our visitors’ experience.

For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here

Strictly Necessary

Strictly Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions. See More.

Analytics

Analytics cookies help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. These cookies may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages. See More.

Preferences & Features

Preference and Feature cookies allow our website to remember choices you make, such as your language preferences and any customisations you make to pages on our website during your visit. See More.

Targeting / Advertising

Targeting cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests. They perform functions like preventing the same content from reappearing, ensuring ads are displayed and, in some cases, selecting content based on your interests. See More.