{"product_id":"9780224036405-secondhand-timequake","title":"Timequake","description":"Kurt Vonnegut has often pointed out the ridiculous ways our society has conducted itself. Now, as both a character in and a chronicler of a bizarre event at the millennium, Vonnegut manages to make some sense of life as he's lived it - and observed it - for more than seventy years. According to Vonnegut's alter ego, science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur in New York City on February 13, 2001. It is the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience. Should it expand or make a great big bang? It decides to back up a decade to 1991, making everyone in the world endure ten years of deja-vu and a total loss of free will - not to mention reliving every nanosecond of one of the tawdriest and most hollow decades. In 1996, dead centre of the  'rerun', Vonnegut is wrestling again with Timequake I, a book he couldn't write the first time and won't be able to now.\nAs he struggles, he addrresses, with his trademark wicked wit, the relationship between memory and deja-vu, humanism, suicide, the Great Depression and World War Two as the last generational character builders, the loss of American eloquence, the obsolescent thrill of reading books, and what 'extended family' really means.","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48888922308827,"sku":"9780224036405-SECONDHAND","price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/3b345240-f45f-4fe7-884b-0345a54c8077.jpg?v=1781790380","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/9780224036405-secondhand-timequake","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}