I really liked this book, it is bleak, funny (and a bit slow). But it is also quite deep, as an observation on civilization and how humanity never learns.

spoilers ahead


A canticle for Leibowitz is divided into 3 sections, each ending rather abruptly and each next section continues hundreds of years later.

We start out a few hundreds of years after a nuclear apocalypse, and something called the 'simplification', the survivors blaming knowledge for the destruction of the world; we follow a novice of the monastic order of Leibowitz and how he discovers a schematic of some complete random and unimportant electrical circuit (which nobody can anyway understand or do anything with, because of the 'simplification'), and how it it leads to some seemingly not-so-important events regarding the church.

The next two sections of the book are set in a time when society starts developing again, and then later again when there is a war ongoing.

The book has many interesting and often funny characters, but sometimes their stories suddenly turn tragic.