According to Vonnegut's alter ego, science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout a global timequake will occur in New York City on 13 February 2001. It is the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience. Should it expand or make a great big bang? It decides to back up a decade to 1991, making everyone in the world endure ten years of deja vu and a total loss of free will-not to mention reliving every nanosecond of one of the tawdiest and most hollow decades. In 1996, dead centre of the 're-run' Vonnegut is wrestling again with Time-quake I, a book he couldn't write the first time and won't be able to now. As he struggles, he addresses, with his trademark wicked wit, the relationship between memory and deja vu, humanism, suicide, the Great Depression and World War II as the last generated character builders, the loss of American eloquence, the obsolescent thrill of reading books, and what 'extended family' really means.
