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  • Breakfast of Champions

  • Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
  • Narrated by: John Malkovich
  • Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (162 ratings)

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Breakfast of Champions

Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
Narrated by: John Malkovich
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Publisher's Summary

Audie Award Finalist, Best Male Narrator, 2016

Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.

The core of the novel is Kilgore Trout, a familiar character very deliberately modeled on the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985), a fact that Vonnegut conceded frequently in interviews and that was based upon his own occasional relationship with Sturgeon. Here Kilgore Trout is an itinerant wandering from one science fiction convention to another; he intersects with the protagonist, Dwayne Hoover (one of Vonnegut's typically boosterish, lost, and stupid mid-American characters), and their intersection is the excuse for the evocation of many others, familiar and unfamiliar, dredged from Vonnegut's gallery. The central issue is concerned with intersecting and apposite views of reality, and much of the narrative is filtered through Trout, who is neither certifiably insane nor a visionary writer but can pass for either depending upon Dwayne Hoover's (and Vonnegut's) view of the situation.

America, when this novel was published, was in the throes of Nixon, Watergate, and the unraveling of our intervention in Vietnam; the nation was beginning to fragment ideologically and geographically, and Vonnegut sought to cram all of this dysfunction (and a goofy, desperate kind of hope, the irrational comfort given through the genre of science fiction) into a sprawling narrative whose sense, if any, is situational, not conceptual. Reviews were polarized; the novel was celebrated for its bizarre aspects and became the basis of a Bruce Willis movie adaptation whose reviews were not nearly so polarized. (Most critics hated it.)

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©1973 Kurt Vonnegut (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about Breakfast of Champions

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  • Jen
  • 2023-10-08

Brilliant performance!

Thank you John Malkovich for bringing this great book alive. His narration was a perfect fit for this book.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Amazing writing, perfectly read

Very compelling and evocative story expertly read by Mr. Malkovitch. I will be listening to this one again.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Hmmm

I get that this is supposed to be next level brilliant, and some parts certainly are. But listening to it, read by malkovich, was simply dreadful.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant book brilliantly delivered.

A better narrator for this book could not have been selected. An absolutely sublime listen.

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great story

I love KV character development and the randomness of the stories. What a great book and ending.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Now I can die happy.

At one point during the narration John Malkovich has to describe Kurt Vonneguts drawing of an asshole and that alone makes this audiobook a masterpiece.

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  • acr
  • 2023-01-27

Loved this story as a kid.

Only giving it 4/5 because of the racism. Jeez it’s racist. Still a good story but needs refreshing.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Funny, entertaining, and a little sad.

Who knew John Malkovich would be a great narrator for Kurt Vonnegut’s 2nd most famous book? Please enjoy.

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Awesome reading

John Malkovich is the perfect orator for this book. What a fantastically quirky take on reality a wild and at times uncomfortable journey.

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Outstanding

What can be said of such an iconic work? The narration by JM was compelling.

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