Mother Night

Mother Night

Cover art of first edition (paperback)
Author	Kurt Vonnegut
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Fawcett Publications/Gold Medal Books
Publication date	1961
Media type	Print (hardcover & paperback)
ISBN

Mother Night is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1961. The title of the book is taken from Goethe's Faust.

It is the fictional memoirs of Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American, who moved to Germany in 1923 at age 11, and later became a well-known playwright and Nazi propagandist. The action of the novel is narrated (through the use of metafiction) by Campbell himself. The premise is that he is writing his memoirs while awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison. Howard W. Campbell also appears briefly in Vonnegut's later novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

As the Nazi Party consolidates its power over 1930s Germany, Campbell decides to remain in the country despite his parents' decision to leave. Campbell continues to write plays, his only social contacts being members of the Nazi Party. Being of sufficiently Aryan parentage, Campbell becomes a member of the party in name only. He is politically apathetic, caring only for his art and his wife Helga, who is also the starring actress in all of his plays.

The first part of the book ends after Campbell visits the Berlin Zoo and encounters Frank Wirtanen, an agent of the U.S. War Department. Wirtanen wants Campbell to spy for the United States in the impending world war. Campbell immediately rejects the offer, but Wirtanen quickly adds that he wants Campbell to think about it. He tells him that Campbell's answer will come in the form of how he acts and what positions he assumes once the war begins.

Once World War II starts, Campbell begins to make his way up through Joseph Goebbels' propaganda organization, eventually becoming the "voice" of broadcasts aimed at converting Americans to the Nazi cause. Unbeknownst to the Nazis, all of the idiosyncrasies of Campbell's speeches – deliberate pauses, coughing, etc. – are part of the coded information he is passing to the American Office of Strategic Services. Campbell never discovers, nor is he ever told, the information that he is sending.