FROM TODAY'S SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Counterculture idol Kurt Vonnegut has died at his home in Manhattan, aged 84, The New York Times reports.
The literary iconoclast's death was reported by family friend Morgan Entrekin, who told the paper that Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.
Vonnegut was a novelist known for his dark humour and metaphysical and science fiction content. He wrote 14 novels, including Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions and Timequake during a career that began in 1950 with the publication of a short story in the magazine Colliers.
His books were described as dark, comic narratives that blended science fiction, metaphysics, and humanism.
Slaughterhouse-Five, based on his experience during the firebombing of Dresden while being held there as a prisoner of war, brought the horrors of the bombing to the public's attention and became his most famous work.
"The firebombing of Dresden was a work of art," Vonnegut wrote. It was "a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany".
Vonnegut, the youngest of three children, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1922 and was a third generation German-American.
He is survived by his wife, photographer Jill Krementz, and seven children.