Hi, I'm Lovar Burton and this is Lovar Burton Reads.

In every episode I hand pick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too.

I wanted to close out the season with something I read recently that just really knocked me out.

It's by one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut and I'm going to tell you a little bit about

where he was in his life when he wrote this story.

Vonnegut served in the army during World War II.

He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and he was taken as a prisoner of war and when he

was finally able to return home he got married, had a baby and eventually he took a job with

General Electric as a technical writer and later as a publicist.

He actually started writing fiction while he was there and eventually he was able to leave

GE and write full time.

The story that I'm reading today, DP, appears in his collection, Welcome to the Monkey House.

The audiobook is available from Harper Audio.

DP is a story from early in Vonnegut's writing career and it's one of many stories he wrote

that touch on the after effects of war.

DP stands for Displaced Persons, a term for people who have been forced to flee their homes

in particular as a result of war.

The story is set in a small town in Germany, in the American zone of occupation where

a group of nuns run an orphanage for displaced children.

One of those children stands out from the others.

They call him Joe Lewis and if you're a little too young to know that reference Joe Lewis

...