Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since enjoyed a long and well-deserved tenure in the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.

Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows a platoon of Marines who are stationed on the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948 with the wisdom of a man twice Mailer's age and the raw courage of the young man he was, The Naked and the Dead is representative of the best in twentieth-century American writing.

Norman Mailer wrote The Naked and the Dead at the age of twenty-five, after serving two years in the Philippines as a rifleman during World War II. He has written thirty-one books, including Armies of the Night (1968), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Executioner's Song (1979), which also won the Pulitzer, and more recently, Harlot's Ghost.