Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1923. He served as a bombardier in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, an experience that deeply influenced his writing. After the war, he studied at the University of Southern California, New York University, and Columbia University, later teaching at Yale and the City College of New York. Heller's first and most famous novel, Catch-22 (1961), introduced the now-iconic term for a no-win bureaucratic paradox. The novel's anti-war satire and fragmented narrative structure made it a landmark of 20th-century American literature. Though none of his later works—including Something Happened (1974) and Good as Gold (1979)—matched the critical and popular success of Catch-22, Heller remained a significant voice in American fiction, known for his cynical wit and exploration of institutional absurdity. He died in 1999.