TITLE: Catch 22
AUTHOR: Joseph Heller
PUBLISHER: Simon and Schuster
PLACE: New York
YEAR: 1961
EDITION: First
BINDING: Original blue cloth with original dust jacket
NO.OF PAGES: 443
SIZE:
Height: 28.5 cm
Width: 22.5 cm.br.
Depth: 3 cm

SIGNED BY JOSEPH HELLER ON THE TITLE PAGE

Catch-22 is Joseph Heller's first novel and his most acclaimed work. Set during World War II, the novel uses a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient narration,mainly focusing on the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Occasionally, the narrator also shows us how other characters, such as the chaplain or Hungry Joe, experience the world around them. As the novel's eventsare described from the different points of view through separate out-of-sequence storylines, the timeline of Catch-22 develops along with the plot.

The novel's title refers to a plot device that is repeatedly invoked in the story. Catch-22 starts as a set of paradoxical requirements whereby airmen mentally unfit to fly did not have to, but could not actually be excused. By the end of the novel, the phrase is invoked as the explanation for many unreasonable restrictions. "Catch-22" has since entered the English language and can be understood as an unsolvable logic puzzle, a difficult situation from which there is no escape.

Joseph Heller was born in 1923 in Brooklyn New York to Russian- Jewish Immigrants. At a young age Hellerlost his father because of a surgical operation when he was only 5 years old, multiple critics believe that this is where Heller developed his dark, wisecracking humor that is ever present in the multiple novels he wrote in his lifetime. After finishing High School in 1941, Heller enlisted in the Army Air Corps where he flew 60 plus mission as a bombardier during WWII . His experience as a bombardier was shown in his novel "Catch-22", which followed a man named John Yossarian a bombardier who continually tries to get out of flying dangerous missions but finds that it is impossible because of the military's use of catch 22. When questioned later about his novel and his view of society Heller said " Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts.. and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society"(CNN, 1999).