A startling portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by the world-renowned author of The Executioner's Song. Mailer reconstructs the life of this curiously adventurous if doom-laden young man, giving a full account of the Minsk years, that hitherto uncharted period of Oswald's life.
In perhaps his most important literary feat, Norman Mailer fashions an unprecedented portrait of one of the great villains--and enigmas--in United States history. Here is Lee Harvey Oswald--his family background, troubled marriage, controversial journey to Russia, and return to an "America [waiting] for him like an angry relative whose eyes glare in the heat." Based on KGB and FBI transcripts, government reports, letters and diaries, and Mailer's own international research, this is an epic account of a man whose cunning, duplicity, and self-invention were both at home in and at odds with the country he forever altered. Praise for Oswald's Tale

"America's largest mystery has found its greatest interpreter."--The Washington Post Book World "Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance. . . . From the American master conjurer of dark and swirling purpose, a moving reflection."--Robert Stone, The New York Review of Books

"A narrative of tremendous energy and panache; the author at the top of his form."--Christopher Hitchens, Financial Times

"The performance of an author relishing the force and reach of his own acuity."--Martin Amis, The Sunday Times (London)

Praise for Norman Mailer

"[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation."--The New York Times "A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent."--The New Yorker "Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure."--The Washington Post "A devastatingly alive and original creative mind."--Life "Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance."--The New York Review of Books "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."--Chica