Gravity’s Rainbow | Gravity’s Rainbow

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Author: Thomas Pynchon
First Published: 1973
Type of Work: Novel
Type of Plot: Historical realism
Time of Work: The mid-1940’s
Setting: Europe
Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction, Picaresque fiction, Apocalyptic and catastrophe fiction, Alternate history
Subjects: Power, personal or social, Sex or sexuality, Europe or Europeans, 1940’s, World War II, Drugs, Espionage or spies, Behaviorism, Technology, Paranoia, Quest, Arms or weapons, Rocketry or rockets
Locales: Europe, United States, London, England

Tyrone Slothrop, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army toward the end of World War II. Stationed in England, he is sent on a strange mission to locate the staging area both for the V-2 rockets bombarding England and for the prototype of a new rocket, the A4. The A4 is even more destructive than the V-2. The Germans are preparing to launch it in a desperate effort to change the course of the war. Slothrop goes to the French Riviera, to Switzerland, and ultimately to the “Zone,” occupied Germany after the hostilities officially have ended. Slothrop is a naïve...

Gravity’s Rainbow | Gravity’s Rainbow

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