Rabo Karabekian, an Armenian-American ex-painter, is a disillusioned one-eyed divorcé whose children loathe him. In the 1950s he was a drinking partner of the Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollack and Mark Rothko, and in his old age he lives off the famous paintings he acquired from them. As for his own work, it has long since peeled away or fallen apart due to the defective paints he used. All of his house is available for viewing except for a potato barn on the property that is padlocked and cannot be opened until his death. This potato barn, and its secrets, becomes the driving mystery of Kurt Vonnegut's novel, and form a link between Karabekian and the infamous husband of the title.

Broad humor and bitter irony collide in Vonnegut's fictional biography of aging artist Rabo Karabekian--first introduced in Breakfast of Champions--who wants only to be left alone at his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked in his potato barn. "A joyous, soaring fiction".--Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

An old man recounts his past to a voluptuous widow, revealing man's compulsion to create and destroy what he loves.

Broad humor and bitter irony collide in Vonnegut's fictional biography of aging artist Rabo Karabekian--first introduced in Breakfast of Champions--who wants only to be left alone at his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked in his potato barn. "A joyous, soaring fiction".--Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

An old man recounts his past to a voluptuous widow, revealing man's compulsion to create and destroy what he loves.