"What they call love is a risk, to always get hit out of nowhere by some wave and end up on your own." -Jesse Lacey

Hundreds of people fall in love each day, be it with circumstances, ideas, members of the opposite sex, members of the same sex. Each of these people is gambling. Love is a risk, by nature- truth gives it potential to conquer, but an ounce of deceit can ruin individuals and even nations. Kurt Vonnegut seems to explore this idea throughout his 1961 novel Mother Night, using characters that possess great capacities for love, but also for lies.

Our protagonist is Howard Campbell, Jr., a man whose loves and loyalties thrust him into nonsensical circumstances. American born and German raised in the years preceding the Second World War, he identifies himself as "nationless by inclination." It is this statement that is among the most ironic...