Captain John Yossarian, MA 0660237, a pilot in the 256th Squadron, a US Army B-25 bomber squadron, is convinced that everyone wants to kill him. Starting with the enemy pilots, down to the last of his junior soldiers. They shoot at him, try to knock him down, poison his food. He, for his part, fights for his ambition to live forever, or die while trying to do so. The mythological hero of Catch 22, Yossarian, is really crazy: he doesn't want his enemies to kill him. And about his enemies, in his army, the generals and colonels and doctors and psychiatrists and anyone who sends him to continue flying and bombing and killing, the narrator says: "General Dreidel's belief as a professional soldier was uniform and focused: he believed that the young men who received orders from him should be willing to give their lives for the ideals , the ambitions and quirks of the old men from whom he took orders." Yossarian understands this, and it is simply impossible to believe how sane he is. This is the catch - Catch 22. The new Hebrew translation of Catch 22 is presented to the old readers as a longing tribute, and to the generation of readers who did not know Joseph - with envy: what an experience awaits you! This wonderful writer, Joseph Heller, was always told: "You wrote a lot of things after Catch 22, but such a first book must be a terrible burden, after all, you never managed to write such a beautiful book after it!". And his answer, in Yossarian style: "No one else succeeded either." Joseph Heller was born in May 1923 in Brooklyn, New York to a poor Jewish family, and grew up in Coney Island. Heller served as a bombardier on a B 25 in World War II and flew over sixty missions in Italy and North Africa. In 1945 he was released from the army and began to study English literature at New York University. In 1949 he completed his master's degree at Columbia University. Between the years 1950-1952 he taught English at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1953 he began writing his famous book "Catch 22" which was published in 1961. Catch 22 tells the story of Yossarian, a member of an air crew in World War II. The book's title is derived from the name of the catch that prevents Yossarian from being released from the army: only crazy people can be released from the army, but if you want to be released from the army, you're probably not crazy. "Catch 22" was an extraordinary success and became a cult book. Heller wrote several other books, but none of them had the enormous success of this book. The book was published in Hebrew for the first time in 1971 by Beitan Publishing, translated by Bnei Landau and Bnei Hadar. His book Portrait of the Artist as an Elderly Man was published in Hebrew in May 2006. Heller passed away in 2000.
