Norman Mailer

Norman Kingsley Mailer, (born January 31, 1923) American writer and innovator of nonfictional novel.

Norman Mailer was born in 1923 in Long Branch[?], New Jersey. Mailer was brought up in Brooklyn and began attending Harvard University in 1939. In the university he started to be interested with writing and published his first story when he was 18.

Mailer joined the Army in the World War II and served in South Pacific. In 1948, Just before enrolling in the Sorbonne, in Paris, France, he wrote a book that made him famous in the world, The Naked and the Dead[?] which was based on his personal experiences during World War II. It was hailed by many as the best American novels came out of WWII.

After the war Mailer worked as a scriptwriter in Hollywood. Much of his work was refused by many publishers. But in mid 1950s he began to be famous as an anti-establishment essayist. In stories like The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster (1956), Advertisement for Myself (1959), Mailer examined violence, hysteria, crimes, and confusion in the American society.

Other of Mailer's famous works include Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), Armies of the Night (1968, awarded Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award), Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), Of a Fire on the Moon (1970), The Executuoner's Song (1979, awarded Pulitzer Prize) and Harlot's Ghost (1991).

In 2001, his book The Naked and the Dead[?] would be listed as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by the editorial board of the American Modern Library.

Norman Mailer has been married six times and has nine children.