a comic but serious US novel (1961) about the madness of war. It was written by Joseph Heller (1923–1999), and a film version was made in 1970. The story is about a US Air Force pilot during World War II. He hates the war and tries to avoid having to fly planes. The book was a great success with US students in the 1960s. In the novel, Catch-22 is a military rule that says a person who is mad does not have to fly bomber planes, but in order not to have to fly them you have to ask permission, and doing so is a sign that you are not mad. The expression has now entered the English language, meaning an unpleasant situation from which you cannot escape because you need to do one thing before doing a second, and you cannot do the second thing before doing the first:
We’re in a Catch-22 situation.