Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Catch-22 is a grimly amusing read about what happens when bureaucracy is valued above all else. Set in an American camp in Italy in WW2, it plays with the idea of rule-following to the letter in the complete absense of critical thought. The titular "catch" is one that the camp doctor mentions when the main character is attempting to get signed off to go home: he can say he's crazy, at which point he would be classed as insane and sent home, but if he says he's crazy, then he's sane enough to realise he's crazy, ergo, well enough to fight. This hellish circular logic pervades the entire book in a fantastic way to create an incisively satirical anti-war story.

Surrounded by an entire camp of people going through the motions, you get to watch the main character attempt to wiggle his way out of fighting through every channel possible - official and unofficial. Lives are ruined thanks to paperwork technicalities before people even get into their planes, at which point their lives are ruined and ended by the war they are fighting. People are broken and chewed up to feed the American war machine, even though its goals are nebulously defined and - quite often - maliciously manipulated or simply running off dodgy intel that people are too scared to confirm. Each page is rammed full of hopelessness and exhaustion, but the comedy that Joseph Heller is able to wring from each situation (however horrid) is incredible.