An American Dream

A key backlist title from the highly acclaimed author of The Naked and the Dead and The Fight. War hero, ex-Congressman, a professor of 'popular but somewhat notorious reputation', television personality and husband of the rich and beautiful Deborah ('a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz'), Stephen Rojack lived the American Dream. But his enviable life concealed a strange tension, the constant 'itch to jump', and when one day he finally cracks and strangles his luscious wife, he unleashes a personality of undreamt-of ferocity. A wanted murderer, Rojack is suddenly catapulted into an alien world of gangsters, crumbling tenements and downtown bars. Here, he meets Cherry, a small-time singer who ekes out her living in sleazy nightclubs, waiting for a break. She's the woman Rojack falls for, dangerously, desperately, tragically! A powerful exploration of one man's quest for depravity, An American Dream shocked the USA on first publication in 1965 with its graphic depictions of sex and violence. One of the key works of twentieth-century American literature, the novel's white-hot prose makes it, for many, Mailer's finest achievement.

ISBN 0007204965   Pages 240 ISBN13 9780007204960 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 191 Publisher HarperCollins Publishers   Published in London Imprint HarperPerennial   Series title Harper Perennial Modern Classics Format Paperback   Previous ISBN 9780586091708 Publication date 15 May 2006   Height (mm) 197 Non-book description Paperback   Width (mm) 130 DEWEY 813.54   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

'Mailer writes like an angel -- a master of small surprises that are precursors of seismic shocks.' London Review of Books

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