Short answers, pulled from the story.
Catch-22 is a satirical novel about Army Air Corps Captain John Yossarian, who devises multiple strategies to avoid flying combat missions but finds that military bureaucracy always forces him to stay. Heller described the book's theme as exploring what a sane person does inside an insane society. The title became a standard English phrase for any dilemma with no way out.
Joseph Heller was born on the 1st of May, 1923, in Coney Island, Brooklyn, to poor Jewish immigrant parents from Russia. He graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941.
Heller flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier on the Italian Front, serving with the 488th Bombardment Squadron, 340th Bomb Group, 12th Air Force. He later recalled that many of the missions were relatively safe sorties that pilots called milk runs.
Heller conceived the opening lines in 1953 and delivered the finished manuscript to Simon and Schuster after eight years of work, missing his deadline by four to five years. The novel was published in 1961.
Catch-22 sold only 30,000 hardback copies in the United States in its first year of publication. After the paperback was released in October 1962, the novel found a much larger audience and eventually sold 10 million copies in the United States.
On the 13th of December, 1981, Heller was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, which left him temporarily paralyzed. He was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of Mount Sinai Medical Hospital the same day and later transferred to the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine on the 26th of January, 1982.