Barbary Shore

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