http://angam.ang.univie.ac.at/sess2001/pr2gabriel1.htm
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, in a way the first postmodernist novel because of its sheer playfulness in terms of perspectives used. The story begins with Tristram’s conception and keeps talking about his own birth and early childhood. In contrast, Slaughterhouse Five starts with a frame which does not stand in line with traditional frames, such as the one of Dietrich Knickerbocker in Washington Irving's Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. A frame story usually serves to give credibility to a very unlikely story and to bridge the distance between the reader and the strange happenings related. This is generally the case in tall tales of the 19th century, where an urban, civilized character relates his experience made in the wilderness. He assumes for himself the position of a cultural mediator who even translates the vernacular or explains uncommon behavior. In the frame of Slaughterhouse Five we are given a rather precise temporal setting, which is early June 1968, by the reference to the deaths of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. This precise timing of the frame is done by the means of a concept of time we are familiar with. This linear concept of time stands in contrast to the middle part, which seems random and follows the Tralfamadorian concept that all events are now. That concept seems unusual at a first glance, but in terms of consequences, the Tralfamadorian concept reflect simply our awareness of the events which is always one of now. In the course of the story, the Tralfamadorians prove more and more to be us, the readers, particularly in the scenes of sex and violence.
Time and place traditionally form a union, and one person therefore cannot be in two places at once. The setting is very important for a novel; Henry James, for instance, was extremely careful in placing his novel The Portrait of a Lady. Slaughterhouse Five introduces a different concept of place, and Billy Pilgrim travels between four stages of action which seem to exist simultaneously. These are the battlefield in Luxembourg, Dresden, Cape Cod, and Ilium (a reference to Ilium, the site of the Trojan war). Nevertheless, all references that are linked to the Second World War could also be linked to the Vietnam War. Discussing Dresden as a stage of action in more detail, we talked about Vonnegut's participation in the war and the particularity of Dresden. In fact, Dresden as the actual place of destruction is not so important; it could have been any other city that was destroyed in the war. Kurt Vonnegut just happened to be in Dresden as a prisoner of war when the city was destroyed. Now critics keep returning to his autobiography and wonder why he ended up behind the enemy lines, as sons of prominent families usually did not end up in a uniform at all, or if so, they were at least at a safe distance from enemy lines. It is worth mentioning that the Vonneguts' family fortune had been lost during the depression and that Kurt Vonnegut did not obtain such a good education as his brothers. So the question, if he had been foolish and did not know what the whole war was about, remains open.
http://www.chris-kutschera.com/A/Ahmet%20Altan.htm
"A Trace on Water" by Ahmet, is possibly the first Turkish postmodernist novel.