Despite his commercial success, Vonnegut battled depression throughout his life and in '84 attempted suicide with pills and alchohol, joking later about how he botched the job.
His mother killed herself just before he left for Germany during WWII, where he was taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge.
He was being held in Dresden when Allied bombs created a firestorm that killed and estimated 135,000 people in the city.
He spent 23 years struggling to write about the ordeal, which he survived by huddling with another POW inside an underground meat locker labelled slaughterhouse-five.
What a tortured mind he must have had. A great writer indeed.