"Catch-22", a review

Catch-22, a review

Juan José Angulo de la Calle

The book Catch-22 was written by Joseph Heller in the twentieth century. Although it is a great book, it is not very famous because of its strange plot and characters.

The book is set in Italy in the middle of the twentieth century, during the Second World War.

It is about the missions and life of a crazy group of American soldiers who were attacking Italy during its occupation. Actually, they did not want to be at war and they wanted to come back to the States, but they could not because of the catch-22. That was a law which said that only mad people could ask to return to the USA in order not to be a risk for the army. However, the generals did not accept any request because they thought that crazy people did not recognize that they were mad. So, in the end, the soldiers had to complete several missions and they got worse and worse.

Apart from that, the characters are quite interesting: as they were in a Kafkian situation, they were tired of everything and they usually did strange and weird actions, such as having arguments with prostitutes, being in front of official soldiers without clothes or selling food quite expensively.

Everybody must read this book because the characters are incredible and its plot is really thought-provoking: it has a message which says the war is a complete madness.