A Flamingo Modern Classic.
50th Anniversary Edition.
This book traces the story of a platoon of young American soldiers as they pick their way through treacherous terrain across the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Caught up in the confusion of close-armed combat, preyed upon by snipers, the men are pushed to the limit of human endurance. Held together only by the raw will to survive and barely sustained dreams of life beyond the maelstrom, each man finds his innermost hopes and deepest fears laid bare by the unrelenting stress of battle.
In his early twenties Mailer was himself a Second World War combatant in the Far Eastern theatre. Published three years after the war ended, 'The Naked And The Dead', a shattering masterpiece of nightmarish realism, catapulted Mailer to instant fame.
