Photograph: Thomas R. Koeniges · Public domain

Heller's 1961 debut novel Catch-22 turned a phrase into a permanent fixture of the English language: a rule so self-contradictory that following it is impossible, drawn from his satire of military bureaucracy and the absurd logic of war. The book was slow to catch on but became one of the defining American novels of the century, and its reach was wide enough that Heller was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twice, in 1972 and 1975.