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Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery

Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery Hardcover - 1995

by MAILER, NORMAN

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  • Hardcover

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UK: LITTLE, BROWN, 1995. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 9.3 x 6.3 x 2.8 inches. This work looks at the life of harvey Lee Oswald. In 1959 he defected to the Soviet Union and was sent to Minsk, where he was kept under constant KGB surveillance on the suspicion that he might be a CIA agent. In 1993 Norman Mailer spent six months in Minsk retracing Oswald's two and a half years in the USSR, interviewing Oswald's former friends and sweethearts. He obtained exclusive interviews with KGB officers and access to KGB surveillance reports. Mailer also provides an account of Oswald's disastrous childhood and of the events leading from his return to the US in 1961 and his death in Dallas in 1963. Review 'An epic tale' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Fascinating' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Anyone with curiosity will find a reason to read Origins Reconsidered: it is a superb account of the state of knowledge concerning the evolution of our species . . .Richard Leakey sees the wood and not just the trees' NEW SCIENTIST 'The most powerfully mysterious book to have emerged from America for many years.' THE TIMES 'The point of this book, though, is not who did it, but how Mailer has done it... sage and kingly, elegant and energetic, and perfectly getting the number of OLH-2938.' GUARDIAN 'OSWALD'S TALE is terrific: bristling with vitality and intelligence and wit, and organised with an inventive cunning that makes the reading utterly compelling.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'The meat of the book is the remarkable feat of imaginative sympathy which enables Mailer to engage with Oswald...' INDEPENDENT '... an insight that made the usual conspiracy theories look like so much cerebral Meccano.' Hugo Barnacle, BOOKS OF THE YEAR '... an extraordinary faction, a huge, sprawline, deeply intelligent epic that takes us nearer to the heart of the mystery surrounding the Kennedy assassination.' OBSERVER '... it is the performance of an author relishing the force and reach of his own acuity.' THE SUNDAY TIMES '... his best piece of non-fiction since the first half of THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG.' Martin Amis, BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Mailer's profound understanding of his country and its people generally... lifts the story of Lee Harvey Oswalk clear of the conspiracy crap mills and places it finally into American literature alongside William Manchester's classic DEATH OF A PRESIDENT.' EVENING STANDARD --This text refers to the Paperback edition. About the Author After graduating from Harvard Norman Mailer served in the South Pacific during World War II. He published his first book in 1948 and won the Pulitzer Price twice for THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT and THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG. - This is a heavy book and will require additional postage outside UK.
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About this book

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. (Publisher’s Summary)


Summary

"MARVELOUS . . . BREATHTAKING."--The New York Times Book Review"MAILER SHINES . . . Explaining Kennedy's assassination through the flaws in Oswald's character has been attempted before, notably by Gerald Posner in Case Closed and Don Delillo in Libra. But neither handled Oswald with the kind of dexterity and literary imagination that Mailer here supplies in great force. . . . Oswald's Tale weaves a story not only about Oswald or Kennedy's death but about the culture surrounding the assassination, one that remains replete with miscomprehensions, unraveled threads and lack of resolution: All of which makes Oswald's Tale more true-to-life than any fact-driven treatise could hope to be. . . . Vintage Mailer."--The Philadelphia Inquirer"FASCINATING . . . A MASTER STORYTELLER . . . Mailer gives us our clearest, deepest view of Oswald yet. . . . Inside three pages you are utterly absorbed."--Detroit Free Press"MAILER AT HIS BEST . . . LIVELY AND CONVINCING . . . EXTREMELY LUCID . . . Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance. . . . [He] has found a way to make the dry bones of KGB tapes and his own interviews stand up and perform. . . . From the American master conjurer of dark and swirling purpose, a moving reflection."--Robert Stone The New York Review of Books"THIS IS A NARRATIVE OF TREMENDOUS ENERGY AND PANACHE; THE AUTHOR AT THE TOP OF HIS FORM."--Christopher Hitchens Financial Times"Mailer has written some pretty crazy books in his time, but this isn't one of them. Like its predecessor, Harlot's Ghost, it is the performance of an author relishing the force and reach of his own acuity."--Martin Amis The London Sunday TimesFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

First Edition Identification

Random House published a First Edition, First Printing hardcover in New York, 1995. 

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