Cat's cradle

One of America's greatest writers gives us his unique perspective on our fears of nuclear annihilationExperiment. Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it. Solution. Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding fathers of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world.

For he is the inventor of ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet.

The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three eccentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness.

Felix Hoenikker's death-wish comes true when his last, fatal, gift to mankind brings about an end that, for all of us, is nigh.