Published at the height of the McCarthy era, Norman Mailer’s audacious novel of socialism<i> </i>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, <i>Barbary Shore </i>plays havoc with our certainties and delivers its effects with a force that is pure Mailer.<br> <br> <b>Praise for <i>Barbary Shore</i></b><br> <i> </i><br> “A work of remarkable power, of amazing penetration, both into people and the determining forces of American life.”<b>—<i>The Atlantic Monthly</i></b><br> <br> “Vibrant with life, abundant with real people . . . [Mailer has] a scintillating skill in observation, a mature sense of meaning.”<b>—<i>The Philadelphia Inquirer</i></b><br> <i> </i><br> “This book is nothing short of amazing.”<b>—<i>Newsweek</i></b><br> <br> “<i>Barbary Shore </i>[is] about the kind of country—and what you might call the psychic territory—that American war heroes were returning to.”<b>—<i>The Guardian</i></b><br> <b> </b><br> <b>Praise for Norman Mailer</b><br> <b> </b><br> “[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”<b>—<i>The New York Times</i></b><br> <br> “A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”<b>—<i>The New Yorker</i></b><br> <br> “Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”<b>—<i>The Washington Post</i></b><br> <br> “A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”<b>—<i>Life</i></b><br> <br> “Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”<b>—<i>The New York Review of Books</i></b><br> <br> “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.”<b>—<i>Chicago Tribune</i></b><br> <br> “Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”<b>—<i>The Cincinnati Post</i></b>