Customer Reviews
Earth moving.. - By: , 01 Oct 2008 
This could have gone on for another 700 pages & i would've been fine.
A great book by a great writer.
Brutal, realistic story-telling.
War for real - By: reader 451, 16 Jul 2008 
The Naked & the Dead remains the most realistic war novel I have read. It is neither a romance of heroic deeds nor the grinding, dehumanised tragedy that WWI novels tend to be. Showing war as a contrasted field of acts of courage, calculation, treachery & occasionally weakness & cowardice, but mostly as drudgery & sheer blind chance, it feels honest & true to experience.
Norman Mailer, indeed, wrote his account of WWIIin the Pacific fresh from returning from the front. His book focuses on one island & tracks the destiny of a platoon, whose 15 or so members, each with their own private life back home, their fears & ambitions, become intimate acquaintances of the reader. The Naked & the Dead encompasses a complete campaign, beginning with the sea landing, building up to a major battle, & including the fighting itself. It then swerves into a wildcat mission to circumvent the Japanese line, turning into a classic nail-biting tale of jungle guerrilla, of ambushes & night-fights & forced marches, where the differences between GIs & NCOs erupt to create as much havoc as the fight with the Japanese. In parallel, the novel follows the general's intrigues among the officer corps, providing a bird's eye view of the campaign, its strategy, & its tactics, as well as their impact on the foot-soldiers.
Mailer's tome combines psychology & character analysis with the excitement of action & the realistic depiction of everyday scenes (the construction of the camp, the long struggle to move an anti-aircraft gun by foot, the night watches). It makes the reader feel present, as close as can be to standing on the actual scene. Of course, this was WWII, & every war is probably unique. Still, this is the closest thing, & it is for sure better than having to fightin one.
Very impressive - By: Didier, 25 Oct 2007 There's nothing much to say really: together with James Jones' "The thin red line" this is the best account of WW II combat that I know of. An extremely powerful, shocking & violent book, I had to read this as a university assignment years ago & (exceptionally so) I am still grateful to that particular teacher. The battle scenes are impressive, but the power of the book derives at least as much from the moving descriptions of the pre-war lives of the soldiers involved: all of them ordinary men, suddenly finding themselves caught upin a nightmare.
Much more than just a War Novel - By: Nickolai Toposky, 24 Jan 2006 The mental tussle between Hearn & Cummings provided some great moments of tension, you are never sure how the General will react to Hearns challenges.
Mailer does a great job of impressing upon the reader the extent of physical toil & pain the men are put through, the 'litter detail'in particular. I could literally feel my arms & legs ache as I read it.
He also was not afraid to confront a wide spread resentment of the Jews amongst the men, at a time when, post Holocaust, many would have liked to conviniently forget their previous prejudices.
The Naked and the Dead - By: , 23 Jun 2005 I picked up this book at random & have been hooked on Mailer ever since.
Quite simply the best WWII book I have ever read.
By getting into the minds of his characters & switching between them, Mailer creates a tension & unease that is sustained from cover to cover. With this comes a real insight into war being about individuals rather than a homogenous group with a common cause or aim.
