Book review: ‘Catch-22’ by Joseph Heller

I’ve read Catch-22 several times over the years. The book’s title has entered the English language to describe a paradoxical situation from which the person in it cannot escape. The book’s anti-hero, Yossarian, a US Airforce bombardier in Italy towards the end of the Second World War, is told all he needs to do to be excused taking part in future missions is ask to be excused on ground of insanity, but there’s a catch, Catch-22: asking to be excused from missions that endanger one’s life is the act of a sane person, and sane people cannot be excused on grounds of insanity. As Yossarian himself observes, “That’s some catch, that Catch-22”.

The book’s eponymous catch adopts a number of guises within Joseph Heller’s satirical masterpiece, which is populated by a host of mostly insane characters whose stories unfold in wildly non-chronological order, and which grows increasingly darker as the book progresses. None of which description gives any impression of how this remarkable book somehow hangs together.