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
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8614-3
