Catch-22

Same WWII subject matter, same non-linear structure, same dark comedy register — Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim accepts the war's absurdity through time-travel fatalism where Yossarian refuses it through escape

The bureaucratic trap that defeats all logic — Kafka's Josef K and Yossarian both face systems that cannot be appealed, only endured or fled

Both use institutional confinement as allegory for the oppressive logic of conformity — the hospital ward and the military squadron operate by the same Catch-22 logic

The other great anti-war novel of the 20th century — Remarque plays it straight where Heller plays it absurd, but both reach the same conclusion about who wars are for

The direct literary ancestor of Catch-22 — a WWI soldier who survives military bureaucracy through apparently sincere incompetence, the comic prototype for Heller's method

Published 1968, directly influenced by Catch-22 — the Korean War military hospital as absurdist comedy, same institutional critique, same survival-through-laughter strategy