Catch-22

Catch-22 is a satirical war novel by the American writer Joseph Heller, published in 1961, following Captain John Yossarian, a bombardier in the United States Army Air Forces stationed in the Mediterranean during the Second World War, as he and his squadron try to stay alive and, if possible, be released from combat duty despite an ever-rising number of missions the military keeps demanding of them. The novel takes its title from a fictional military regulation, catch-22, under which a flier judged insane can be grounded, but the act of requesting to be grounded is itself proof of sanity, a closed logical trap the novel uses as its central image for the self-perpetuating absurdity of military bureaucracy and war itself. Told through a fragmented, non-chronological structure that circles repeatedly back over the same events from different angles, the novel draws on Heller's own wartime service as a bombardier. Its title has passed into general English usage to describe any no-win situation defined by contradictory rules, and the novel has sold more than ten million copies since publication.