Catch-22

Catch-22 contributed its very title to the English language as a term for any absurd, self-contradictory dilemma from which there is no escape. Heller's darkly comic anti-war satire, set among American bomber crews in the Mediterranean during the Second World War, exposed the insanity of military bureaucracy through a brilliantly circular logic that made laughter and horror indistinguishable. The novel's anarchic energy and structural inventiveness influenced generations of satirists and black comedy writers.

Printed in 1961 during the Cold War and just before the escalation of the Vietnam conflict, Catch-22 captured a growing American skepticism toward institutional authority and the rhetoric of patriotic sacrifice. Though initially polarizing among critics, the novel gained enormous popularity through the 1960s counterculture and has remained a defining text of anti-war literature, its central paradox resonating wherever individuals find themselves trapped by the very systems meant to protect them.