50th Anniversary Edition, With a New Introduction by the Author
Paperback, 736 pages
English language
Published Aug. 5, 2000 by Picador.
Based on Mailer’s own experience of military service in the Philippines during World War Two, The Naked and the Dead is a graphically truthful and shattering portrayal of ordinary men in battle. First published in 1949, as America was still basking in the glories of the Allied victory, it altered forever the popular perception of warfare.
Focusing on the experiences of a fourteen-man platoon stationed on a Japanese-held island in the South Pacific during World War II, and written in a journalistic style, it tells the moving story of the soldiers' struggle to retain a sense of dignity amidst the horror of warfare, and to find a source of meaning in their lives amidst the sounds and fury of battle.
The novel that put Norman Mailer on the literary map and him at his best. While overseas during the war, he wrote furiously, taking copious notes, and sending all that material home to New York where it was waiting for him to be used as the source for this book when he returned to the states.
Whatever you think of Mailer now, he was smart and tough for most of his life.
