A very strange book, and a very seductive one. Port Moseby and his wife, Kit, are traveling in North Africa with their annoying friend Tunner. They turn out to be en route to oblivion, a passage that brings them up against the desert, the Arabs, the French colonizers, a very unsavory mother/son combination and their enigmatic selves. Bowles, who lived much of his life in Tangiers, knew the enticing other-ness of Algeria and Morocco, enough to know that you can write about it in straightforward, unadorned prose—are you listening, Lawrence Durrell?—and still not fail to convey its treacherous beguilements. The last of this book’s three sections, when Kit is given over to her fate in the desert, is one of the damnedest things you will ever read.
Vonnegut is still more cult favorite than literary lion (and he probably prefers it that way), but he deserves full canonical marks for this kaleidoscopic koan of a novel about Billy Pilgrim, a man who has “become unstuck in time.” Pilgrim ricochets helplessly from decade to decade, living the episodes of his life in no particular sequence, not excluding his own death, his capture by aliens called Tralfamadorians, and his traumatic service in World War II, when he lives through the firebombing of Dresden. Slaughterhouse-Five is a cynical novel, but beneath the bitter, grim-jawed humor is a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the 20th century.
In light of the Material Girl performing at Super Bowl XLVI, TIME takes a look at her life and career, both of which have been lived firmly in the public eye.