The Kurt Vonnegut books in order begin with Player Piano in 1952 and span 14 novels, along with short story collections, plays, essays, interviews, letters, and a children’s book. His writing blends science fiction, satire, autobiography, dark humor, and a persistent concern with war, technology, loneliness, and human decency.
Vonnegut’s novels tell separate stories, but recurring characters, places, and ideas connect many of them. I recommend publication order for a complete read because it lets Kilgore Trout, Eliot Rosewater, Tralfamadore, and Midland City reappear naturally. Readers who only want a starting point can begin with Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, or Mother Night.
Jump to:
- Kurt Vonnegut Books
- Kurt Vonnegut Short Story Collections
- Kurt Vonnegut Plays and Screenplays
- Kurt Vonnegut Nonfiction Books
- Kurt Vonnegut Children’s Book
- Who Was Kurt Vonnegut?
Kurt Vonnegut Books
Vonnegut wrote 14 novels. They are not divided into a formal series, and the supposed “Delta Fiction” pairing of Galápagos and Bluebeard is not an actual Vonnegut series. Both belong in the main novel list with the rest of his fiction.
The novels can be read independently, but publication order is the simplest choice for anyone planning to read them all. Player Piano was retitled Utopia 14 for a 1954 paperback edition, so those are two titles for the same book rather than separate novels.
- Player Piano (1952)
- The Sirens of Titan (1959)
- Mother Night (1962)
- Cat’s Cradle (1963)
- God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
- Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
- Breakfast of Champions (1973)
- Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! (1976)
- Jailbird (1979)
- Deadeye Dick (1982)
- Galápagos (1985)
- Bluebeard (1987)
- Hocus Pocus (1990)
- Timequake (1997)
If you’re deciding where to begin, I’ve also ranked the best Kurt Vonnegut books and explained which ones work best for different readers.
Kurt Vonnegut Short Story Collections
Vonnegut began his career writing short fiction for magazines, and several collections appeared after his death. A number of stories from Look at the Birdie were also sold as individual ebooks in 2009, including “Confido,” “FUBAR,” “Hall of Mirrors,” and “The Nice Little People.” Those are excerpts from the collection rather than separate books, so I recommend reading them together in Look at the Birdie.
- Canary in a Cat House (1961)
- Welcome to the Monkey House (1968)
- Bagombo Snuff Box (1999)
- God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
- Armageddon in Retrospect (2008)
- Look at the Birdie (2009)
- While Mortals Sleep (2011)
- We Are What We Pretend to Be: The First and Last Works (2012)
- Sucker’s Portfolio (2012)
- Complete Stories (2017)
We Are What We Pretend to Be contains the previously unpublished novella Basic Training and Vonnegut’s unfinished final work, If God Were Alive Today. Sucker’s Portfolio first appeared as a Kindle Serial in 2012, with the completed volume following in 2013.
For the broadest collection, I’d choose Complete Stories. It gathers Vonnegut’s short fiction in one volume and includes five stories that had not previously been published.
Kurt Vonnegut Plays and Screenplays
Vonnegut wrote for the stage and screen as well as prose. Happy Birthday, Wanda June and Between Time and Timbuktu are the two dramatic works most readily available as standalone books. Several shorter plays and librettos appeared in magazines, anthologies, or limited productions rather than standard trade editions.
- The First Christmas Morning (1962)
- Fortitude (1968)
- Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)
- Between Time and Timbuktu (1972)
- Stones, Time and Elements: A Humanist Requiem (1987)
- Make Up Your Mind (1993)
- L’Histoire du Soldat (1997)
Between Time and Timbuktu is an experimental television play assembled from characters and material in Vonnegut’s earlier fiction. It is not one of his 14 novels.
Kurt Vonnegut Nonfiction Books
Vonnegut’s nonfiction includes essays, speeches, autobiographical collages, interviews, and letters. The categories overlap, especially in Palm Sunday and Fates Worse Than Death, so I’ve kept these books together rather than separating them into artificial memoir and essay lists.
- Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)
- Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage (1981)
- Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage of the 1980s (1991)
- Like Shaking Hands with God: A Conversation About Writing with Lee Stringer (1999)
- Kurt Vonnegut on Mark Twain, Lincoln, Imperialist Wars and the Weather (2004)
- A Man Without a Country (2005)
- Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2011)
- Kurt Vonnegut: Letters (2012)
- Kurt Vonnegut: The Cornell Sun Years 1941–1943 (2012)
- If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? (2013)
- Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style with Suzanne McConnell (2019)
- Love, Kurt: The Vonnegut Love Letters, 1941–1945 (2020)
I’d start with A Man Without a Country for a concise introduction to Vonnegut’s nonfiction voice. Palm Sunday and Fates Worse Than Death are broader autobiographical collages, while Letters and Love, Kurt provide a more personal view of his life.
Kurt Vonnegut Children’s Book
Vonnegut wrote one children’s book, illustrated by Ivan Chermayeff. Sun Moon Star retells the birth of Jesus from the newborn child’s perspective, focusing on the unfamiliar sights and sensations of entering the world.
- Sun Moon Star with Ivan Chermayeff (1980)
Who Was Kurt Vonnegut?
Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1922. He attended Cornell University before leaving school and enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1943. German forces captured him during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and transported him to Dresden as a prisoner of war.
Vonnegut and other prisoners survived the February 1945 bombing of Dresden while sheltering in an underground meat locker at the slaughterhouse where they were held. Afterward, he was forced to help recover and dispose of bodies from the ruined city. That experience became central to Slaughterhouse-Five, although the novel combines autobiography with fiction, time travel, and satire rather than presenting a literal memoir.
Across 14 novels and decades of shorter writing, Vonnegut returned to war, technology, free will, environmental destruction, inequality, and the need for ordinary kindness. Characters such as Kilgore Trout and Eliot Rosewater recur across otherwise independent books, as do places such as Midland City and the planet Tralfamadore. Vonnegut died in New York in 2007.
Looking for more books in order?
If you want more science fiction authors and reading-order guides like this one, start with my Science Fiction Books in Order index.