Bestselling Cult Author, Kurt Vonnegut, Has Died

Cult American author Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at the age of 84.

Kurt Vonnegut was on of America's most interesting and loved modern authors. Over the decades Vonnegut wrote a number of novels that showed the dark side of life, though often times he did this with great humour.

Vonnegut's counterculture works made him a cult icon amongst students during the 60's and 70s. It was in 1963 that he published one of is most acclaimed novels ' Cat's Cradle'.

'Cats Cradle' is a satire about modern science. According to Vonnegut this book showed that continued developments in modern science will cause the world to end.

Kurt Vonnegut was born in 1992 in the city of Indianapolis. He comes from German ancestry. Writing wasn't the first career on Vonnegut's list, he went to Cornell University in New York to study chemistry.

After university Kurt Vonnegut joined the US Air Force were he served in WWII. It was during the war that Vonnegut experienced some of his most defining moments. His experiences of the war lead to the writing of one of his most famous books, 'Slaughterhouse Five'. The story is based on Vonnegut's own experience of the city of Dresdan, Germany during the bombing. During the bombing of Dresdan Vonnegut hid in meat locker that was deep underground, along with other prisoners of war. 135,000 people died in the bombing of Dresdan and as a prisoner of war Vonnegut had to remove dead people from the debris. 'Slaughterhouse Five' aims to demonstrate how terrible war can be. It however was not his first published novel.

When he returned to the US, Vonnegut, did not become a full time writer straight away. First he took a job as a reporter at the City News bureau in Chicago and then went to for General Electric in the pr department. It is said that Vonnegut hate his General Electric job.

The first novel by Vonnegut was published in 1951. This was 'Player Piano', a science fiction story that is set in a world run by machines. Vonnegut's most notable novels include; 'The Sirens Of Titan', 'Breakfast of Champions', 'Slaughterhouse Five' and 'Cat's Cradle'.