the first edition of the author's second published novel

This is a very good first edition with original dustjacket of Norman Mailer's second novel. His first novel, The Naked and the Dead, having been about the Second World War, this novel is about its aftermath, its protagonist a veteran with amnesia and its themes revolving around socialism and the turbulent political climate in McCarthyist America.

Four years after this was published, Mailer went on to co-found The Village Voice, an alternative newsweekly published in Greenwich Village, New York, that became of the most important periodicals in the downtown scene in the second half of the 20th century, as well as remaining a best-selling author.

First edition; 8vo (21.5 x 14.5 cm); small device on printer's imprint page, pp. 87-89 uncut, light toning; publisher's black cloth (lightly faded), spine lettered in white (lightly chipped), original uncut dustjacket in red and black lettered in white, red, and black (faded and lightly torn, especially on spine); [vi], 312, [i]pp.