Cat's cradle/kurt vonnegut

Kurt Vonneguts Cats Cradle is an irreverent and highly entertaining fantasy about the playful irresponsibility of nuclear scientists, beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range.

All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding fathers of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world.

For he is the inventor of Ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet.

The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikkers three eccentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness.

Will Felix Hoenikkers death wish come true? Will his last, fatal gift to humankind bring about the end that, for all of us, is nigh? Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonneguts cult tale of global apocalypse preys on our deepest fears of witnessing the end and, worse still, surviving it.