Blogs in February 2020

Ancient Evenings 20th February 2020

Norman Mailer’s dazzlingly rich, deeply evocative novel of ancient Egypt breathes life into the figures of a lost era: the eighteenth-dynasty Pharaoh Rameses and his wife, Queen Nefertiti; Menenhetet, their creature, lover, and victim; and the gods and mortals...

Read More 

The Naked and the Dead 25th February 2015

Based on Mailer’s own experience of military service in the Philippines during World War Two, ‘The Naked and the Dead’ is a graphically truthful and shattering portrayal of ordinary men in battle. First published in 1949, as America was...

Read More 

The Executioner’s Song 1st January 1970

In the summer of 1976 Gary Gilmore robbed two men. Then he shot them in cold blood. For those murders Gilmore was sent to languish on Death Row – and could confidently expect his sentence to be commuted to...

Read More