Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15714 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-15
• Binding: Paperback
• 720 pages

Synopsis
This is a reissue of a modern classic. This book catapulted Norman Mailer to fame on its first publication in 1948. 'The best war novel to come out of the United States.' - "The Times". This is Norman Mailer's first novel. It is the book that catapulted him to instant fame. A modern classic, on every American Literature student's reading list. 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.

Customer Reviews

War for real
The Naked and the Dead remains the most realistic war novel I have read. It is neither a romance of heroic deeds nor the grinding, dehumanised tragedy that WWI novels tend to be. Showing war as a contrasted field of acts of courage, calculation, treachery and occasionally weakness and cowardice, but mostly as drudgery and sheer blind chance, it feels honest and true to experience.

Norman Mailer, indeed, wrote his account of WWII in the Pacific fresh from returning from the front. His book focuses on one island and tracks the destiny of a platoon, whose 15 or so members, each with their own private life back home, their fears and ambitions, become intimate acquaintances of the reader. The Naked and the Dead encompasses a complete campaign, beginning with the sea landing, building up to a major battle, and including the fighting itself. It then swerves into a wildcat mission to circumvent the Japanese line, turning into a classic nail-biting tale of jungle guerrilla, of ambushes and night-fights and forced marches, where the differences between GIs and NCOs erupt to create as much havoc as the fight with the Japanese. In parallel, the novel follows the general's intrigues among the officer corps, providing a bird's eye view of the campaign, its strategy, and its tactics, as well as their impact on the foot-soldiers.

Mailer's tome combines psychology and character analysis with the excitement of action and the realistic depiction of everyday scenes (the construction of the camp, the long struggle to move an anti-aircraft gun by foot, the night watches). It makes the reader feel present, as close as can be to standing on the actual scene. Of course, this was WWII, and every war is probably unique. Still, this is the closest thing, and it is for sure better than having to fight in one.

Very impressive
There's nothing much to say really: together with James Jones' "The thin red line" this is the best account of WW II combat that I know of. An extremely powerful, shocking & violent book, I had to read this as a university assignment years ago and (exceptionally so) I am still grateful to that particular teacher. The battle scenes are impressive, but the power of the book derives at least as much from the moving descriptions of the pre-war lives of the soldiers involved: all of them ordinary men, suddenly finding themselves caught up in a nightmare.