Galapagos
Kurt Vonnegut's 1985 novel is narrated from a million years in the future by the ghost of Leon Trotsky Trout, the son of one of Vonnegut's recurring characters. He looks back at the failed maiden voyage of a cruise ship called the Bahia de Darwin, which left port in 1986 during a global financial collapse and ran aground in the Galapagos Islands. The handful of stranded passengers, the narrator tells us, became the ancestors of the small, flippered, fish-eating humans who will populate the planet long after the rest of the species is gone. Vonnegut uses the frame to satirize the oversized brains he blamed for most of human trouble. It is one of his most quietly biting novels.
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What you might want to know about Galapagos
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A million years from now, a ghostly narrator tells the story of the small shipwreck that produced the next stage of human evolution.
Barrymore included Galapagos in her 2016 favorites list for The Week, where she said she has read ten of Vonnegut's books and praised the strange worlds he built.
No. Galapagos stands on its own, though readers who know Slaughterhouse-Five or Cat's Cradle will recognize the voice.
Galapagos was written by Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1985 by Dial Press.
Galapagos is 324 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Galapagos takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Galapagos is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.