Look at the Birdie

After Vonnegut’s death in 2007, his archive revealed a treasure: fourteen short stories, written in the 1950s, that had never been published in book form. These are not juvenilia. They are the work of a fully formed artist operating at the height of his gifts — warm, funny, morally intelligent, and possessed of the distinctive voice that would make him one of the most beloved American writers of the twentieth century.

The stories in Look at the Birdie take place in the recognisable world of postwar American life: suburban living rooms, corporate offices, family dinners, the quiet desperation of people trying to be decent in a world that doesn’t always reward decency. Vonnegut watches his characters with the compassion of someone who has genuinely paid attention to human beings, and he finds in their ordinary predicaments the same questions that animate all his fiction: What do we owe each other? How should we treat the people we love? What does it mean to try?

A genuine posthumous discovery — and a reminder of what an extraordinary storyteller the world lost. Published by Vintage.