The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition, With a New Introduction by the Author

Norman Mailer

Oct 2013 · Sold by Henry Holt and Company

About this ebook

Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since enjoyed a long and well-deserved tenure in the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.

Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows a platoon of Marines who are stationed on the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948 with the wisdom of a man twice Mailer's age and the raw courage of the young man he was, The Naked and the Dead is representative of the best in twentieth-century American writing.

Ratings and reviews

I wanted to like this, but it just plods along so clunkily. Any novelty its themes had back when it was written have been repeated better over and over since. The author tries so hard to impress that it just gets old. Enough repetitive GRE words? Check. The Author's modern forward acknowledges this, so at least he knew. This book deserves its place in history, but it is a slog to read it through and through

About the author

Norman Mailer wrote The Naked and the Dead at the age of twenty-five, after serving two years in the Philippines as a rifleman during the Second World War. He has written thirty-one books, including Armies of the Night (1968), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; The Executioner's Song (1979), which also won the Pulitzer; and more recently, Harlot's Ghost and the collection The Time of Our Time. In addition, he has composed many essays and poems and has directed and appeared in several motion pictures. He lives in New York.