Bob Slocum is anxious, bored and fearful of his job. So why is it he wants nothing more than the chance to speak at the next company convention? In this darkly satirical book, Joseph Heller takes us for a turn on the maddening hamster wheel of work. Hellers workplace is a cradle of paranoia, bravado and nauseating banter, forever shadowed by that perennial question, whos really running the show here? In Hellers hands, our daily grind has never seemed so absurd.

Selected from the bookSomething Happenedby Joseph Heller

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Joseph Heller was born in 1923 in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a bombardier in the Second World War and then attended New York University and Columbia University and then Oxford, the last on a Fullbright scholarship. He then taught for two years at Pennsylvania State University, before returning to New York, where he began a successful career in the advertising departments ofTime, LookandMcCall'smagazines. It was during this time that he had the idea forCatch-22. Working on the novel in spare moments and evenings at home, it took him eight years to complete and was first published in 1961. His second novel,Something Happenedwas published in 1974,Good As Goldin 1979 andClosing Timein 1994. He is also the author of the playWe Bombed in New Haven.