Novel
The Naked and the Dead
Norman Mailer · 1948
Synopsis
An American division lands on Anopopei, an imaginary Pacific island held by the Japanese. General Cummings, for whom the army holds together through the fear each man has of his superior, directs the operation; his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Hearn, a Harvard man, stands up to him. Sergeant Croft, from Texas, leads a reconnaissance platoon through fear. Flashbacks give each man his earlier life: Red Valsen, who ran away from a mining town in Montana, Goldstein, a Jew from Brooklyn, Martinez, from San Antonio, Gallagher, from South Boston.
Context
The novel was written in fifteen months after the author's demobilisation, in May 1946, from North Truro to Brooklyn, drawing on some four hundred letters sent to his wife. His publisher, Rinehart, made him replace the swear words with an invented word, “fug”, which embarrassed him for a long time, he would say. The book appeared in May 1948 and remains his only novel to reach first place in sales. Raoul Walsh made a film of it in 1958, which Mailer considered one of the worst ever made.
Who it is for
A long novel with many characters, interrupted by biographical chapters. Translated into French by Jean Malaquais in 1950, then by Clément Baude in 2024.
Prizes and reception
Sixty-two weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, eleven of them at the top; George Orwell regarded it as the best book on the last war.
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