Norman Mailer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey. He graduated from Boys High School in 1939 and studied at Harvad University, Cambridge (1939-43), receiving S.B. in aeronautical engineering. In 1941 Mailer won Story magazine's college contest for 1941 by a story title 'The Greatest Thing in the World'.

During World War II he was a sergeant in the United States Army, and served among others in Leyte, Luzon, and Japan. Mailer was discharged in 1946 and wrote in fifteen months THE NAKEND AND THE DEAD. He enrolled at the Sorbonne (1947) and made his international breakthrough with his first novel, which appeared in 1948. The Naked and The Dead drew upon the author's combat experiences in the Philippines. Subsequent novels didn't receive similar respect, among them BARBARY SHORE (1951), which was set in Brooklyn boarding house and depicted the conflict between an former radical and a federal agent.

In the late 1940s Mailer worked in Holywood as a scriptwriter. He moved in 1951 to Greenwich Village in New York City. Mailer third novel, THE DEER PARK (1955) was a thinly weiled depiction of his relationship with Adele Morales, an artist whom he married in 1954. Following years in the authors life were more or less chaotic and in 1960 he stabbed Adele at the endof an all-night party in Manhattan. Mailer was given a suspended sentence because Adele refused to press charges.

In the mid-1950s Mailer started to gain fame as an anti-establishment essyist and in the 1960s Mailer was listed among the New Journalists. He cofounded and named the Village Voice, one of the earliest underground American newspapers.

THE PRESIDENTAL PAPERS (1963) established Mailer as one of the most vigorous essayist in America. In the 1960s and 1970s he won admiration with his journalism as seen in the books THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT (1968), MIAMI AND THE SIEGE OF CHIGACO (1968) and OF A FIRE ON THE MOON (1970).

Mailer has written on the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions since 1960, placing himself at the center of American political and cultural life and reported his observations. His essays Mailer has published in popular and men's magazines, such as Esquire and Playboy, as well as more intellectual journals like Dissent, Commentary, and the New York Review of Books.

In the 1970s Mailer became a target of feminist attack and was depicted as the quintessential male chaucvinist pig in Kate Millett's Sexual Politics. He wrote biography of the life and career of Marilyn Monroe and published higly succesful true life novel, THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG (1979), which was based on the life and death of a convicted killer Gary Gilmore. Mailer's next novel, ANCIENT EVENINGS (1983), was set in the ancient Egypt. With TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE (1984), a murder mystery, Mailer returned to movie business - he wrote the screenplay for the film and directed it. HARLOT'S GHOST (1992) was a 1300 pages long chronicle of the CIA.

While gathering material for Harlot's Ghost Mailer also found not previously known Russian documents for OSWALD'S TALE (1995), his exhaustive biography of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Mailer has written some thirty controversial and widely translated works. He has also published essays, poems, and directed films. His next large novel under work is the second part of Harlot's Ghost.

THE NAKED AND THE DEAD: Not funny as Heller's Catch-22 or Jaroslav Hašek's Good Soldier Schweik, more realistic than Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front, not so sentimental as Hemingway's Farewell to Arms. The story depicts a group of American soldiers, who are stationed on the Japanese-held island in the Pasific. Flashbacks that illuminate their past mix with feverish combat scenes. When the book appeared in 1949 it was on the other hand hailed as one of the finest American novels of WW II, and criticized as obscene, plainly motivated by personal disgust with army life.

For further reading: Norman Mailer Revisited by R. Merrill (1992); The Lives of Norman Mailer by C.E. Rollyson (1991); Radical Fiction and the Novels of Norman Mailer by N. Leigh (1990); Norman Mailer's America by Joseph Wenke (1987); Critical Essays on Norman Mailer, ed. by J. Michael Lennon (1986); Norman Mailer, ed. by Harold Bloom (1986); Norman Mailer: His Life and Times, ed. by Peter Manso (1985); Norman Mailer by Robert Erlich (1978); Existential Battles by Laura Adams (1976);

Selected works:

• THE NAKED AND THE DEAD, 1948 film 1958, dir. by Raoul Walsh
• THE DEER PARK, 1955
• THE WHITE NEGRO, 1957
• ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF, 1959
• DEATHS FOR THE LADIES, AND OTHER DISASTERS, 1962
• THE PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS, 1963
• AN AMERICAN DREAM, 1965film 1966, dir. by Robert Gist
• CANNIBALS AND CHRISTIANS, 1966
• THE BULLFIGHT, 1967
• WHY ARE WE IN VIETNAM?, 1967
• THE PULIZER PRIZE FOR FICTION, 1967
• THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT, 1968
• THE IDOL AND THE OCTOPUS, 1968
• MIAMI AND THE SIEGE OF CHIGACO, 1968
• RUNNING AGAINST THE MACHINE, 1969
• OF A FIRE ON THE MOON, 1970
• THE PRISONER OF SEX, 1971
• KING OF THE HILL, 1971
• THE LONG PATROL, 1971
• ST. GEORGE AND THE GODFATHER, 1972
• EXISTENTIAL ERRANDS, 1972
• MARILYN, 1973
• THE FIGHT OF GRAFFITI / WATCHING MY NAME GO BY, 1975
• THE FLIGHT, 1975
• GENIUS AND LUST, 1976 - (a portrait of Henry Miller)
• SOME HONORABLE MEN, 1976
• THE EXECUTUONER'S SONG, 1979 (awarded with the Pulizer-prize)
• OF WOMEN AND THEIR ELEGANCE, 1980
• PIECES AND PONTIFICATIONS, 1982
• THE ESSENTIAL MAILER, 1982
• ANCIENT EVENINGS, 1984
• TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE, 1984 - film 1987, written and directed by Norman Mailer - a parody of theChandler style
• HUCKLEBERRY FINN, 1985
• HARLOT'S GHOST, 1991
• PABLO AND FERNANDE, 1994
• OSWALD'S TALE: AN AMERICAN MYSTERY, 1995
• PORTRAIT OF PICASSO AS A YOUNG MAN, 1995
• THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON, 1997 (see also: Jose Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, 1991)
• THE TIME OF OUR TIME, 1998