This book is rededicated to Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a man who served evil too openly and good too secretly, the crime of his times.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

When an apolitical American for whom national borders are alien and who happened to live in Germany on the eve of WW2 is thrown into the jaws of war… no words can do justice to this gripping novel.

Like many other Goodreads reviewers, I think this is one of Vonnegut’s best works, on par with Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five, perhaps even better. It is a straight-up story, without any SF or surreal elements, and what it has to say about morality amid the atrocities of war is not comfortable to swallow. In every way, it’s black gallows humor of the highest order, and only Kurt Vonnegut could deliver it with such pathos and wisdom.

Who is Howard W. Campbell, Jr? Well, he was born in the US but moved to Germany as a young boy. He becomes a playwright as the Nazis grow in power in the 1930s. He is not interested in Nazi politics, just his work and his wife Helga, the star of all his plays. But the Nazi’s love his work and take him in. So he becomes a popular Nazi propagandist, an American demagogue who denounces the Jews and promotes the Aryan race. But things are not that simple. He has also been recruited to be a double-agent for the US War Department, hiding critical info in his vitriolic broadcasts against Jews, Blacks, Catholics and other enemies of the Third Reich.

So it goes…

When WWII ends, he is granted amnesty by his covert US contact, allowed to escape to NY and live a monastic but anonymous existence in a small attic in a run-down building. He befriends the painter downstairs, George Kraft, with whom he plays chess three times a day and keeps loneliness at bay. However, this drab existence is ruined when his cover is blown and the Reverend Doctor Lionel J.D. Jones, dentist, embalmer and white supremacist publisher of The White Christian Minuteman, comes to his apartment.

Campbell is a hero to Nazi fascist supporters in the US, and Dr. Jones is ecstatic to discover this reluctant hero after so many years. He also brings with him a shocking surprise – Campbell’s wife Helga, missing in the Crimea and assumed dead or lost in a Russian gulag. Suddenly everyone wants a piece of Cambell, both supporters and enemies, even the German and Russian governments. The action converges in the basement of Dr. Jones, during a meeting of the Iron Guardsmen of the White Sons of the American Constitution. Everyone is arrested by G-men, but Campbell is released thanks to his covert spy work during the war.

Faced with unwanted freedom and the loss of his only friends, he decides to turn himself over to the Israeli government to face trial for his war crimes. And this is where the story begins…

Mother Night pulls no punches in demolishing our easy platitudes about morality. Is Campbell a war criminal? Or did his spywork absolve him of all his hate-filled propaganda? Is he just an artist caught in events beyond his control, trying to survive and devoted to his wife Helga, a self-professed Nation of Two? Just following orders to survive? Isn’t that the same excuse that every Nazi leader and soldier professed? Or for that matter all the collaborators who survived the war or benefited from it? Is it not justice to take revenge on such people?

Vonnegut spells out the moral in the first sentence of the introduction:

“We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

He also has some pretty incisive comments throughout the book, and I was amazed to discover that almost everything I highlighted was also cited in Algernon’s excellent and superior review. Here are my favorite quotes:

“Future civilizations – better civilizations than this one – are going to judge all men by the extent to which they’ve been artists…Nothing else about us will matter.”

“We all cling to the wrong things, and we start clinging too late. I will tell you the one thing I really believe out of all the things there are to believe. All people are insane. They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.”

“The people she saw as succeeding in a brave new world were, after all, being rewarded as specialists in slavery, destruction, and death. I don’t consider people who work in those fields successful.”

“You hate America, don’t you?” she said. “That would be as silly as loving it,” I said. “It’s impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn’t interest me. It’s no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can’t think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can’t believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.”

“I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings being so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me! Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”

“As a friend of the court that will try Eichmann, I offer my opinion that Eichmann cannot distinguish between right and wrong – that not only right and wrong, but truth and falsehood, hope and despair, beauty and ugliness, kindness and cruelty, comedy and tragedy, are all processed by Eichmann’s mind indiscriminately, like birdshot through a bugle.”

“My case is different. I always know when I tell a lie, am capable of imagining the cruel consequences of anybody’s believing my lies, know cruelty is wrong. I could no more lie without noticing it than I could unknowingly pass a kidney stone.”

Hace al menos cuatro años que tenía en la mira este libro, ya que formaba parte de la selección del podcast de Eugenia Zicavo y Nicolás Artusi, responsables de algunos muy buenos hallazgos. Sin embargo, aunque fue muy difícil hacerme con un ejemplar, cuando al fin lo tuve me ganó la vagancia. La verdad es que es difícil que me atraiga una novela que de antemano sé que se tratará de un espía de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Pero bastó con que lo agarrara y leyera el primer párrafo para seguirme y leerlo en un par de sentadas. Es un libro muy ágil, muy inteligente, gracioso, trágico, triste, actual. Me recordó mucho a los anarquistas que son policías que son anarquistas de El hombre que fue Jueves, de Chesterton, y creo que es uno de esos libros que estarán dándome vueltas en la cabeza por un buen rato.

Madre noche, por alguna razón extraña, sigue siendo inconseguible en México, pese a que hay muchos títulos de La Bestia Equilátera que sí se distribuyen acá, incluidos varios de Vonnegut. La edición es excelente. Pocas veces, realmente pocas, es posible encontrar ediciones tan limpia y amorosamente cuidadas. Empléame, Bestia Equilátera (♥).

What the . . . surely this wasn’t penned by the legendary Kurt Vonnegut, right? I mean, where are the wacky sci-fi elements, the Tralfamadorians, or the head-scratching, confusing time-shifting narrative? We aren’t seriously “stuck in time” for the entire novel, are we? What about his colorful cast of eccentric weirdos? Where’s Kilgore Trout, Dwayne Hoover, or Billy Pilgrim? Ah, but there were some oddballs, and I couldn’t help but notice a few references to Schenectady, New York. That’s all rather curious, but I’m still not entirely convinced. It’s surprising to see such a straightforward narrative from Mr. Vonnegut, but, for the uninitiated, this may actually be his most accessible novel and a good entry point into his catalog.

The narrator of Mother Night is a man named Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American awaiting trial in Israel for war crimes committed as a Nazi propagandist. Howard was born in American but moved to Berlin at a young age. He began his career as an author and playwright, eventually joining the Nazi party, in name only. He thinks of himself as an “American by birth, a Nazi by reputation, and a nationless person by inclination” because his only real loyalty is to his wife and their “Nation of Two.” As he rose through the party, his American roots led to him becoming the voice of the Nazi propaganda broadcasts aimed at converting Americans to the cause.

Howard claimed to have been recruited as an American spy, but there are no government officials that will confirm or deny his claim. And all attempts to track down his handler proved unsuccessful because the guy apparently used a fake name, and no one ever saw the two together. Throughout the story, he’s rescued from prosecution time and time again by his handler/“Blue Fairy Godmother.” So Howard asks, “Can I prove I was an American spy? My unbroken, lily-white neck is Exhibit A, and it’s the only exhibit I have.”

Even so, how could it possibly balance the scales with all the horrible atrocities his words helped fuel? And therein lies the moral of the story, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” That’s what weighs heavily on Howard’s soul, so, in the end, he chooses to stand trial—not so much for war crimes as for crimes against his own conscience.

While this started off as a solid three-star read, I thought the last quarter of the book was brilliant—the commentaries and philosophies were remarkable—bordering on poetic. The analogy of the totalitarian mind as a system of gears whose teeth have been filed off at random was particularly astute.

That said, this wasn’t my favorite Vonnegut—I have to admit did miss some of his trademark wackiness—but, even so, it was far better than most, and the ending alone pushed it to a five-star read for me.

“’Life is divided up into phases,’ he said. ‘Each one is very different from the others, and you have to be able to recognize what is expected of you in each phase. That’s the secret of successful living.’” (p.644) [1]

That sounds like a pretty wise motto, one to avoid anxiety, frustration and bitterness, and it could well have been gleaned from one of those slick life guidebooks that promise to tell you the way to happiness and inner satisfaction, or even success. Or is it so good, eventually, that it could have made its way into a more respectable book life Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations? What I, at a closer look, do not quite like about it is that its premise seems to be that you ought to guide your life according to from “what is expected of you” without really asking who is expecting it and with what justification, and that it sets up your life as a series of reactions to these expectations without ever granting you the right to an initiative as to expecting things from yourself and taking your life into your own hands. But still, it does sound reasonable in some ways. Only you might no longer think so and see the danger that is inherent in such advice when you consider that Kurt Vonnegut, in his third novel Mother Night, puts these words into the mouth of the infamous Adolf Eichmann, when this orchestrator of genocide is preparing for his trial in Israel. Then, the advice starkly reeks of opportunism and spinelessness.

Mother Night, whose title is a reference to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play Faust, purports to be the autobiography of Harold W. Campbell Jr., an American who moved with his parents to Germany when he was eleven years old, where he later became a promising author of romantic plays before he was recruited as a spy by the American military when the U.S. entered the Second World War. On the surface, he became a rabid Nazi, climbing up the Party’s echelons, while in reality he delivered vital information to the Allies, with the help of a secret code there was in his vile anti-Semitic broadcasts in which he denounced the Jews and glorified Nazi ideology. Or was he a Nazi really only on the surface? This is one of the urgent questions posed by the novel and reflected in one of three morals the “editor” wants to draw from Campbell’s example, namely the sentence, ”We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” (p.535) One of Campbell’s problems after the war is that with the exception of Frank Wirtanen, his former recruiter, and the late President Roosevelt, no one actually knows about the real purpose of those Nazi broadcasts, and no one is actually supposed to know because American spy activities are not to be revealed, and so in the eyes of the world, Campbell is an infamous Nazi, whose speeches of hatred are seen as measures contributing to the Holocaust. The fact that the “truth” about his activities must never be told is an ironic parallel – although Vonnegut never draws it – to one of the vilest ideas expressed in one of Himmler’s vilest off-the-record speeches to his S.S. men, in which he claims that to have killed so many people and yet to have remained “decent” (anständig) – in that there was neither personal hatred nor the desire to enrich themselves in these killings – redounds greatly to the honour of his men, but nevertheless, it is something that must never be told. The second problem Campbell is faced with is even larger, because it refers to a question the anti-hero has to ask himself, namely the question why he did what he did, and where his allegiance really lay. Characteristically, he has no answer when Wirtanen, after the war, asks him what he would have done, had Nazi Germany been victorious at the end.

This is the question that blights Campbell’s entire life, despite Wirtanen’s repeatedly successful efforts to get him off the hook whenever he is about to be held accountable for his role in Nazi Germany. He only has several lame excuses or explanations to offer, like these two:

“The experience of sitting there in the dark, hearing the things I’d said, didn’t shock me. It might be helpful in my defense to say that I broke into a cold sweat, or some such nonsense. But I’ve always known what I did. I’ve always been able to live with what I did. How? Through that simple and widespread boon to modern mankind – schizophrenia.” (p.653)

Now, this seemingly does not amount to very much, but if we are honest, we often come across situations where we act or talk in a way that does not completely sit straight with us, but do it anyway because we know it is expected from us and saves us the trouble of justifying ourselves, or even greater discomfort. It is the kind of doublethink that modern societies are generally based on – as well as are politeness, laziness, both mental and emotional, cowardice and egoism. When Campbell remembers how he was originally recruited, he said that he always had something of a ham in himself and that the idea of double-crossing the Nazis while rising in their hierarchy greatly intrigued him, and this is as close as we get to whatever reasons he had for doing what he did.

A little earlier, Campbell says,

“I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me! Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.” (p.641f.)

This is quite a typical excuse, shifting the blame from the liar and hate-monger onto those who believe the lies and drink up the hatred, and even though there are good reasons for guarding against implicit and unquestioning faith in authorities, we must admit, at the same time, that complex societies could hardly be run without it. I am no expert in medicine and therefore have to believe my doctor, and neither can I go and check every single bit of information that trickles down to me via the media, and so I must make up my mind to believe them or to trust the new-fangled profession of fact checkers that are often self-appointed. Or must I?

As you can see, Mother Night is quite philosophical and thought-provoking a novel, but as it was written by Vonnegut, it is also a quirky and subversively funny text, as when, for instance, we come across bits of dialogue like the following ones:

“’Everyone thinks the Germans have no sense of humor,’ he said.
‘Germany is the most misunderstood country in the world,’ I said.” (p.605)

“’You’ve changed so,’ she said.
‘People should be changed by world wars,’ I said, ‘else what are world wars for?’” (p.625)

“’Plagiarism is the silliest of misdemeanors. What harm is there in writing what’s already been written? Real originality is a capital crime, often calling for cruel and unusual punishment in advance of the coup de grâce.’” (p.670)

As these intellectual titbits show, Vonnegut’s humour is hardly played for comic relief but the language of a serious man who thinks that great truths are not to be explained but presented in some sort of twilight for other people to discover them on their own. Even the moral, which the editor feels so sure about that he says, in his first sentence, ”This is the only story of mine whose moral I know” (p.535) is put into question by something Frank Wirtanen says later on, namely this,

“’I’m not used to things having form – or morals, either,’ he said. ‘If you’d died, I probably would have said something like, ‘Goddamn, now what’ll we do?’ A moral? It’s a big enough job just burying the dead, without trying to draw a moral from each death,’ he said. ‘Half the dead don’t even have names. […]’” (p.657)

Can we really draw a moral from any gruesome thing that is happening in the world around us, even now as I am writing this? Or is it ludicrous or obscene to take human suffering and pain as the foundation for a lesson that makes us feel wiser, better, and when the worst comes to the worst, even smugger? Campbell even illustrates that a belief in one’s own righteousness can be the worst motive that might ever inspire our actions, in what is one of the most compelling passages of this brilliant novel, when he faces his nemesis, Bernard B. O’Hare, a hate-ridden loser, who once had his biggest moment in arresting Campbell after the total German defeat:

“’There are plenty of good reasons for fighting,’ I said, ‘but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where’s evil? It’s that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. […]’” (p.699)

If there is any moral in this book, this is it for me.

At the end of Mother Night, Campbell, faced with a trial on the charge of crimes against humanity, hangs himself for “crimes against himself” (p.708), and it was here that the double meaning implied in the expression “crimes against humanity” became clear to me: Its first meaning is obvious, namely the one that is commonly given to the phrase, but the second meaning lies a little bit deeper, and it is this: In doing something despicable, vile, or even horrible, you also violate the human core in yourself, distorting, polluting and destroying your own potential to be truly in communion and harmony with yourself and to make sense in the world. So, don’t throw your life away by being, or pretending to be, something you should loathe.


[1] Page references are with regard to the first volume of the collection of Vonnegut’s novels published by the Library of America.

I really enjoy Kurt Vonnegut’s books. His grasp on human nature and his ability to describe people, places, and situations draw me in. He gives the reader a lot to think about, but he never reveals too much. He lets us draw our own conclusion.

I liked the layout and format of Mother Night, which is a story that takes place post-WWII. Vonnegut challenges our ideas of right and wrong, which are not always so black and white. Can we live with the choices we make when the lines get blurred?

A definite must read!

Another Vonnegut classic! It has all the elements you come to expect. It has narration by the main character, an out of chronological order plot, humor out the wazoo, whacky memorable characters, a sense of a world gone mad, and a thought-provoking conclusion. Every Vonnegut fan remembers their first read and that book always holds a special place in their hearts. This book, even though it's not as popular as his other works, can easily capture the admiration of a first-time reader. It's just that good!

My sister, a librarian and crazy mad Vonnegut fan (when he passed away she actually wrote the eulogy for her town's local newspaper), said to me when she suggested this book, that Mother Night is probably Vonnegut's most underappreciated novel, while Vonnegut himself considered it one of his best. His other personal favorites?: Slaughterhouse 5, and Cat's Cradle. She is a librarian with a PhD, so I don't argue literature with her; and Vonnegut is her favorite. When a reader can claim A favorite author, I know it's an almost holy connection. In fact, she hasn't seemed the same since he left this world, I think when he turned off the lights, he took a little of her spark with him. Having finally read this, I have to agree with my little sis, and say this is my second favorite Vonnegut book.


He backs into this read, starting the story with the moral: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Howard Campbell proceeds to narrate his story from inside an Israeli jail cell, where he is about to be tried for war crimes, "I am an American by birth, a Nazi by reputation, and a nationless person by inclination." The book examines moral ambiguity, and in true Vonnegut style, provokes the reader to a powerful, and emotional indictment against the crimes of complacency, apathy, and omission. Even from the antagonist himself we get a sense of ambiguity as we question his reliability; so apathetic about his own integrity, does anything he says have validity. Towards the ending of his story, and possibly his life, I had the sense that Howard finally looked into himself, called out for answers, and realized he heard only empty echoes--the loneliness is painful and devastating.

Vonnegut's hallmark nonchalance appears, but as the sinister version of nonchalance - complacency, and his usual gallows humor seems to question whether it is too dark to allow any brevity. So what is there to enjoy in a story so bleak? The answer is in the very essence of Vonnegut's writing -- to feel yourself respond so strongly to the quiet evil you experience in this story -- it is hearing your own conscience speaking back to you, affirming your integrity, as Vonnegut intends. This may be his most contemplative book--it will definitely exercise your own morality, even leave you with a little cerebral after-burn. "All that is needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing"... *so it goes,* ...always.
*This is my first review for Goodreads. I reprinted what I wrote for Audible, and hope to join the community of excellent reviewers here on Goodreads.

For me this was a memorable and enjoyable story. It's a story of war and aftermath consequences. More importantly: everybody's pretending! A great black humored story written only the way Kurt Vonnegut could author. I have read several other works by KV and this is one of his better stories (in my opinion) .

The moral of the story: be careful of who you pretend to be, because you become what you pretend to be!

I recommend "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Mother Night" to anyone new to Kurt Vonnegut. "Thanks!

Vonnegut wrote a galaxy of five star novels but Mother Night often falls between the cracks in any discussion. It's too bad because in many ways it may be his best book. It is perhaps his most straight forward in narration. It is also the only novel in which the author, whose themes are often hotly discussed in literary circles, places the moral on the first paragraph of the introduction...

This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it is a marvelous moral; I simply happen to know what it is. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

But it wouldn't be Vonnegut if it was that straight forward. Mother Night is a tale of identities; false ones, imagined one, mistaken ones...all except true ones. For Vonnegut, our identity makes us what we are but are not always freely chosen and easily taken away. Mother Night has a Philip K Dick quality without the sci-fi elements. The author chooses World War II as his arena and give us one of his saddest and most perplexing character; Howard W Campbell Jr, an American whose spreads pro-Nazi and anti-Semite poison for the Third Reich yet is also a double agent sending messages to the Allies by code through his rants. He is surprisingly passive about his role and this is a regular theme of Vonnegut's stories. His characters fall into roles not of their choosing and even when they make choices they are ambivalent about the goal. Does Campbell's evil deeds outweigh the good that he did through his espionage activities? If you think you will get an answer to this, you do not know Vonnegut. The one thing Campbell does that the strange cast of characters does not do is to question his role and what he is. And that is what makes him so vibrant and alive to the reader. Mother Night never lets you be comfortable or lets you think you figured our "hero" out. It is philosophical and pacifistic yet also cynical. It is an "easy read" but it can be so deceiving that one reading will probably not reveal all the exquisite nuances on the novel. I would rank this with Sirens of Titans and Cat Cradle as Vonnegut's masterpieces

The text of the book is presumably the notes of a supposed war criminal… He is behind bars in Jerusalem…

I am surrounded by ancient history. Though the jail in which I rot is new, some of the stones in it, I’m told, were cut in the time of King Solomon.
And sometimes, when I look out through my cell window at the gay and brassy youth of the infant Republic of Israel, I feel that I and my war crimes are as ancient as Solomon’s old gray stones.

Ambiguity and ambivalence in everything… Uncertainty… Was the narrator on their side? Was he on our side?

I disappeared from Germany at the end of the Second World War. I reappeared, unrecognized, in Greenwich Village. There I rented a depressing attic apartment with rats squeaking and scrabbling in the walls. I continued to inhabit that attic until a month ago, when I was brought to Israel for trial.

There is an apparent side known to everyone…

I earned my keep until the war ended in 1945 as a writer and broadcaster of Nazi propaganda to the English-speaking world.

And there is a secret side known to no one…

I committed high treason, crimes against humanity, and crimes against my own conscience, and I got away with them until now.
I got away with them because I was an American agent all through the war. My broadcasts carried coded information out of Germany.

Living the double life had taken its toll… He lost his love… He lost his true identity… He lost his future…
Very strange events and intrigues start brewing around him… History is a steamroller that knows no quarter…

“Lie down, lie down!” the people cried.
“The great machine is history!”
My love and I, we ran away,
The engine did not find us.

The war and its aftermath made a real mess of all the ideologies.

Vonnegut’s insight, wit, and pathos are on every page. It is amazing how well he can build out the confines of this character’s world, how much emotional world-building he does in simple and direct prose. Since this novel takes the form of a confession it allows him an insightful and emotional first-person voice that feels like a spotlight on the reader, asking, What evils, mundane or extraordinary, have you decided to be complacent with? I read this novel decades ago but forgot how short it is. It is concise and to the point and somehow full of both emotional heft and really funny, biting satire. It is dark, honest, and takes no hostages. You don’t want to relate to, or see yourself, in the main character, and yet inevitably you do. It asks questions about morality, art, and humanity, but is constantly entertaining and never preachy. It feels incredibly apt for the world of 2025, to be frighteningly honest, and almost feels like required reading.

(Rounded up from 4.5)