Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Set toward the end of World War II in 1944, on an island off the coast of Italy, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is a satirical antiwar novel. It features black humor, an unusual narrative structure, surrealism (a genre which features strange imagery and events), and a not-so-heroic protagonist who struggles to deal with the insanity of war and concludes that the only sane response to it is not to participate in it. Heller began writing Catch-22 in 1953, and a chapter from the still-in-progress novel was published in an anthology in 1955. The completed novel was published in 1961.
Synopsis compliments of: http://www.enotes.com/catch22