Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Narrated by John Malkovich
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
Vonnegut wrote this half-unhinged and semi-autobiographical, and Malkovich reads it like he understood the assignment on a deeply personal level.
- Great if you want: darkly funny satire that dismantles American myths
- Listening experience: frenetic and absurdist — short runtime flies by
- Narration: Malkovich's theatrical detachment perfectly matches Vonnegut's sardonic narrator voice
- Skip if: you need coherent plot over meta-fictional chaos
About This Audiobook
Breakfast of Champions follows Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's recurring alter-ego science fiction writer, as he travels to a convention in Midland City, where his work has been mistaken for literal truth by a Pontiac dealer on the edge of a breakdown. Vonnegut's 1973 novel is both his most cartoonishly playful, complete with childlike illustrations, and his most desperate, a creator dismantling his own fictional universe in anger and exhaustion.
John Malkovich narrates with the dark, sardonic intelligence that Vonnegut's voice demands. Malkovich finds the novel's particular quality, comedy deployed as an attempt to prevent oneself from crying, with a precision that honors the author's intent. The audiobook is one of the more interesting experiments in celebrity narration matching an actor's persona to a writer's sensibility.