The Oracle of Timbuktu: Remembering Kurt Vonnegut

on his 100th Birthday

mural of Vonnegut in his hometown of Indianapolis, flanked by his original artwork

I recently picked up Michael Asher’s book Death in the Sahara, about the 19th century French colonial expedition to chart a route for a railway line through the Sahara desert. The legendary city of Timbuktu was the intended destination of the ill-fated expedition. It got me thinking about Kurt Vonnegut, specifically his alliterative fictional…