Rating: 
Summary: A Legendary Tale of Evilness and the Irony of Fate
Review: Another reviewer of this book titled his review "Vonnegut: You can't read just one!" Might I add that should you choose only one - This is it! In legendary Vonnengut style this book is humerous but dark. But compared to most of his other writings, the storyline of this book is very tight. And the fate of life, to which, the main character Howard W. Campbell Jr. is entitled, is almost too cruel to bear. This theme appear to be one of Vonnengut's favorites - the cruelty and irony of life. And as always he makes the point in humourous style. But in this novel much more is at play. It leaves one wondering about evilness as such. Are there such things in life for which no regrets are valid? Vonnengut tends to answer yes. But what is there of life, when you're left back with that? There is the sarchastic humor in which Vonnengut is a true master, covering up the fact that even good things gives you no pleasure when you've got the "evil-mark" upon you for life. This is probably one of the darkest novels I've ever come across, but also one of the very best. It forcefully presses some very important questions in a dark but nevertheless very humerous way. I really can't recommend it too much. I don't think anyone can read it without being deeply moved. But it ain't a book to make the sun start to shine. It's more like Monty Python signing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" to cheer up Jesus during his crucifiction. It'll never turn too bad for a good laugh. But that's excactly how bad it turns out for Howard W. Campbell Jr in this book. Read it for yourselves!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Vonnegut twists up a tale of WWII identity crisis
Review: One of Vonnegut's best-layed out novels, "Mother Night" was a world apart from what he had written before. Not to say that "Sirens of Titan" wasn't fantastic; it is probably, in the end, the better book. But here Vonnegut went beyond his substantial imagination to begin to broach two subjects which have haunted him throughout the rest of his career: the horrors of war and the fakeness of most people. Here, his hero spends time as an German immigrant spying for America by reading Nazi propaganda over the radio. His pre-inserted stutters and coughs are really secret messages, but nobody knows that. Indeed, after the war he finds himself a fugitive, and the book asks us to decide which is more important: His helping the Americans or making the Nazis believe in their cause. A fascinating book with lots of surprises, it began a cycle for Vonnegut which would combine harsh reality with an other-wordly imagination, all topped off with black humor. A fantastic recipe
Rating:
Summary: Another Excellent Book
Review: Vonnegut starts out this book with a warning : "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." This story follows the life of an American playwright, Howard W. Campbell Jr., who happens to live in Germany during the Nazi regime. He is confronted by the Americans to work as a spy, sending secret messages through a radio broadcast. He agrees to this but at the same time his broadcasts are filled with propaganda, all in favor of Hitler and his actions. True to Vonnegut's style, the plot gets more and more twisted as the story goes on, ending with Campbell in an Israeli prison. This was a wonderfully well written novel with action and intrigue that made it hard to put down! Each time I finish one of Vonnegut's novels, I find myself longing to head back to the library to find another one.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant! Vonnegut At His Best!
Review: 'Mother Night' is the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr. Nazi propagandist, racist, war criminal, and American spy. The story, told by Campbell from his prison cell in Israel, is of his success as a playwrite in Germany before the war, his recruitment by US intelligence, the devistation of the loss of his wife, the utter lonliness and apathy that plagued his life after the war, and the web of political intrigue that surrounds him before his trial. The style is similar to Vonnegut's other masterwork, 'Slaughterhosue Five,' in which Campbell also makes an appearence, and is told with the same wit and wonderful insight into the human soul. Truly a classic and a pleasure to read!
Rating:
Summary: A Legendary Tale of Evilness and the Irony of Fate
Review: Another reviewer of this book titled his review "Vonnegut: You can't read just one!" Might I add that should you choose only one - This is it! In legendary Vonnengut style this book is humerous but dark. But compared to most of his other writings, the storyline of this book is very tight. And the fate of life, to which, the main character Howard W. Campbell Jr. is entitled, is almost too cruel to bear. This theme appear to be one of Vonnengut's favorites - the cruelty and irony of life. And as always he makes the point in humourous style. But in this novel much more is at play. It leaves one wondering about evilness as such. Are there such things in life for which no regrets are valid? Vonnengut tends to answer yes. But what is there of life, when you're left back with that? There is the sarchastic humor in which Vonnengut is a true master, covering up the fact that even good things gives you no pleasure when you've got the "evil-mark" upon you for life. This is probably one of the darkest novels I've ever come across, but also one of the very best. It forcefully presses some very important questions in a dark but nevertheless very humerous way. I really can't recommend it too much. I don't think anyone can read it without being deeply moved. But it ain't a book to make the sun start to shine. It's more like Monty Python signing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" to cheer up Jesus during his crucifiction. It'll never turn too bad for a good laugh. But that's excactly how bad it turns out for Howard W. Campbell Jr in this book. Read it for yourselves!!!
Rating:
Summary: One of Vonneguts better
Review: I just finished re-reading this book, and it was even better the second time around. This book is mostly about plot and morales, and less about charcters, although our main charcter is quite interesting. Jaded by the war, he has nothing to do with the rest of his life but hide. I dont want to give away any plot points, but the moral of the story is clear and brilliant "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be" But towards the end of the book, as Campbell is giving to the man who hate him, he says "Where's evil? Its the large part of very man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side". Thats why i read Vonnegut.
Rating:
Summary: Unconvential in it's conventionality
Review: This is my third endeavor through the works of Kurt Vonnegut and it seems that 'Mother Night' plays out as a more conventional novel in terms of structure and theme. It's sheer brilliance is evident straight from the introduction; where Vonnegut asks that we be good at what we pretend to be, because that's who we will become. He also sets up the dark humor presented in the book by inplicating a second moral, simply stated: "When you're dead you're dead." 'Mother Night' follows the narrative of Howard Campbell, war criminal, throughout his years following the time when he was an agent of the United States in Germany during WWII. Vonnegut, as commonplace in most of his novels, satirizes war and it's absurdity, love, race, and the meaning that we attribute to our lives in a meaningless world where there is essentially no escape. However, the book, unlike typical Vonnegut, focuses on one primary theme; that of the significance of truth. For the characters in 'Mother Night' becoming spies has left them with no country and no hope. What essentially keeps them (among them Campbell) is curiousity. However, as will be revealed during the course of the novel, even this will be crushed as lies become lies and then become truths, and Campbell will remain frozen in his tracks, a victim of the country that he helped and separated from his nation of two, the only nation that had any significance. A well-written narrative, funny and thought provoking. We laugh, but only a bit tentatively, as we watch the 'truth' unfold and wonder if it was worth knowing at all.
Rating:
Summary: valor
Review: I once heard this wonderful little quote:
"Valor is to do unwitnessed what we would like to do in front of the whole world." I think this quote applies very aptly to the main character of this book--he traded his wife, his career, and his sanity for a hidden role in a noble cause. At this point many (possibly including the author) would disagree with me. After all, was he not a Nazi? If Germany had won the war, would he not have continued to rant on in his propanganda-filled shows? Unlikely. Considering how even Russia found out about his status as an American spy, I dare say that his secret would not have remained one for long in the mirror scenario. The ultimate result of his choice would have been ignominious death no matter what the outcome of the war. Finally, what about "you could never have served the enemy as well as you served us?" The veracity of that statement is moot to debate because we are not given exact information on the nature of messages he sent. Even if the statement *was* true, the fault would lie with his recruitor and FDR, not himself. The path of being a Nazi propagandist was paved by those two--Campbell could have easily been a neutral playwright through the war, and emerged unscathed in either outcome of the war. Thus, my contention is that Campbell was a true hero.
Rating:
Summary: fantistic
Review: kurt vonnegut is the man. this book is probably the most proper, and yes i mean proper. the tone, the characters and the plot are impeccable.
Rating:
Summary: A novel about serving evil too openly and good too secretly
Review: To the best of my knowledge, there really is no other writer quite like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Mother Night appears to be a rather straightforward, albeit quirky, novel at first glance, but as one delves down into the heart of Vonnegut's prose one finds grounds for contemplation of some of life's most serious issues. This novel is the first-hand account of Howard Campbell, Jr., a most remarkable character. Campbell is an American-born citizen who moved to Germany as a child and became the English-speaking radio mouthpiece for Nazi Germany during World War II. In the fifteen years since the end of the war, he has been living an almost invisible life in a New York City attic apartment. He misses his German wife Helga who died in the war, sometimes thinks about his pre-war life as a successful writer of plays and poems, and perhaps just waits for history to find him once again. As we begin the novel, he has been found and is writing this account from a jail cell in Israel, awaiting trial for his crimes against humanity. While he is reviled by almost everyone on earth as an American Nazi traitor, the truth is that he was actually an agent working for the American government during the war; this is a truth he cannot prove, though. Thus, in this 1961 novel, the hero is ostensibly a Nazi war criminal. The primary moral of Mother Night, Vonnegut tells us in his introduction, is that "we are what we pretend to be" and should thus be pretty darned careful about what we are pretending to be (a secondary moral being the less enlightening statement "when you're dead, you're dead"). In the eyes of the entire world, Campbell is exactly what he pretended to be during the war, a traitorous Nazi purveyor of propaganda who mocked and demoralized allied troops as well as regular citizens. Internally, Campbell hardly knows what he is anymore; he claims no country, no political values, wanting only to live in a "nation of two" with his beloved wife Helga once again. A series of significant events forces Campbell out of the cocoon of his past fifteen years, and his thoughts and actions along the way provide big juicy morsels of food for thought: taking personal responsibility for one's actions, the harsh truths of war and peace, the sometimes vast differences between truth and fact, individual redemption before self and society, finding direction and a purpose in a world gone mad, etc. Vonnegut's scythe-like dark humor cuts deeper than mere satire, aiming directly at some of the darker sections of the human heart, areas which most individuals too often ignore or refuse to acknowledge. The gallows humor can be quite funny on the surface, but it is in actuality a scalpel which Vonnegut wields to open up the heart and soul of the reader for self-examination. Mother's Night, the title of which is taken from Goethe's Faust, is a relatively short but very powerful novel.
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