American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark, satirical vision in works including "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle" was shaped by the horrors he witnessed during World War II, has died at age 84. Vonnegut died on Wednesday after suffering brain injuries following a fall weeks ago, said Donald Farber, Vonnegut's friend, lawyer, agent and manager.
Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction, but his 14 novels were classics of the American counterculture, resonating with the US antiwar sentiment during the Vietnam War era.
The author's Web site, updated after his death, displayed a simple black-and-white image of a bird cage - a symbolic element in his writing - empty with an open door. "Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1922-2007," the page read. "He was a beautiful man," Farber said. "I never hung up the phone without having laughed, he always left me laughing, no matter what the circumstances of the world."
Irwyn Applebaum, president of the Bantam Dell publishing division of Random House, said, "By all counts he was one of the great writers of the 20th Century and continued to be one of the great writers in the 21st Century." Bantam Dell publishes some of the author's seminal works, including "Breakfast of Champions," "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," which made him a literary idol in the 1960s and 1970s, especially to students.
A defining event in Vonnegut's life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany by Allied Forces in 1945, which he witnessed as a young prisoner of war. The bombing killed tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians.
Vonnegut became a cult hero when the novel reached No 1 on best-seller lists and even more popular among many young Americans when some schools and libraries banned the book for its sexual content, rough language and depictions of violence.
A fourth-generation German-American who was born in Indianapolis, Vonnegut is survived by his second wife photographer Jill Krementz, their daughter and his six other children. Two of his children are published authors.