Barbary Shore — Norman Mailer

Published at the height of the McCarthy era, Norman Mailer's audacious novel of socialism is at once an elegy and an indictment, a sinuous moral thriller and an intellectual slugfest. Wounded during World War II, Mike Lovett is an amnesiac, and much of his past is a secret to himself. But when Lovett rents a room in Brooklyn, he finds that his housemates have secrets of their own: One betrays a husband no one ever sees; another may have been a Communist executioner. Combining Kafkaesque unease with Orwellian paranoia, Barbary Shore plays havoc with our certainties and delivers its effects with a force that is pure Mailer.
 
Praise for Barbary Shore
 
“A work of remarkable power, of amazing penetration, both into people and the determining forces of American life.” -- The Atlantic Monthly
 
“Vibrant with life, abundant with real people . . . [Mailer has] a scintillating skill in observation, a mature sense of meaning.” -- The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“This book is nothing short of amazing.” -- Newsweek
 
“Barbary Shore [is] about the kind of country -- and what you might call the psychic territory -- that American war heroes were returning to.” -- The Guardian
 
Praise for Norman Mailer
 
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.” -- The New York Times
 
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.” -- The New Yorker
 
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.” -- The Washington Post
 
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.” -- Life
 
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.” -- The New York Review of Books
 
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.” -- Chicago Tribune
 
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.” -- The Cincinnati Post